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A    COUNTRY 
WITHOUT    STRIKES. 


aS)?  ttE  .S>anie  SCut&or 

Wealth  Against  Commonwealth, 

Labor  Copartnership, 

A  Strike  of  Millionaires, 

Newest  England, 

Etc. 


A  COUNTRY 
WITHOUT  STRIKES 


A  Visit  to  the  Compulsory 
Arbitration  Court  of  New  Zealand 


By 

HENRY  DEMAREST  LLOYD 


WITH   INTRODUCTION  BY 

WILLIAM  PEMBER  REEVES 

rX-MINISTER  OF   LABOR   IN  NIW  ZEALAND 
AND  AUTHOR   OF   THE   COMPULSORY   ARBITRATION  LAW 


NEW  YORK 

DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  CO. 

1900 


Copyright,  1900, 
By  Henry  Demarest  Lloyd. 


> 

CONTENTS. 


*■•  PAGE 

Something  New  in  Strikes  and  Lockouts    .        i 

II. 

The  Shoemaker  Sticks  to  the  Last      .        .      32 

IIL 

J     Better  Committees  than  Mobs     ...      61 

■^    A  New  Song  of  the  Shirt      ....      89 

i 

-J    This  Law  of  Parliament  Becomes  a  Law    ) 
^  OF  Trade ) 

f^  VI. 

u-  What  it  Costs  and  What  it  Pays  .        .152 


0 


^^i^:>iiii(^ 


V 


flOMJi 


INTRODUCTION 


It  is  very  often  asserted  that  those  political  lab- 
oratories, the  Colonies  of  Great  Britain,  shrink 
from  no  experiment  the  object  of  which  is  to 
regulate  and  improve  the  condition  of  the  la- 
bourer. This  assertion  is  but  partly  true.  The 
British  colonies,  though  all  endowed  with  com- 
plete self-government,  differ  very  widely  in  the 
temper  in  which  they  approach  the  labour  prob- 
lem. For  instance,  two  of  the  knottiest  ques- 
tions which  humanitarian  social  reformers  have 
endeavoured  in  our  time  to  solve,  are  confessed- 
ly the  conflict  of  organised  capital  with  organ- 
ised labour,  and  the  necessity  of  securing  a 
minimum  of  comfort  for  the  humbler  class  of 
workers.  Among  eleven  self-governing  Brit- 
ish colonies  two  only  have  made  any  serious 
endeavour  to  cope  with  the  second  of  these 
problems,  and  one  only  has  made  any  deter- 
mined effort  to  grapple  with  the  first.  Vic- 
toria and  New  Zealand  essay  to  control  by 
statute  wages  and  the  conditions  of  labour;  in 
New  Zealand  alone  the  conflicts  of  labour  and 
capital  are  by  law  and  custom  submitted  to 
the  arbitration  of  state  tribunals.     The  Victori- 


viii  Introduction 

an  Factories'  Act,  to  which  I  have  just  referred, 
is  an  extremely  interesting  measure  under  which 
the  wages  paid  and  certain  other  conditions 
observed  in  the  clothing,  boot  and  shoe,  furni- 
ture-making, and  one  or  two  other  industries 
are  determined  from  time  to  time  by  a  state 
board  whose  rulings  have  legal  force.  The 
statute  deserves  careful  study  and  may  be  re- 
garded as  an  experiment  kindred  to,  though  by 
no  means  identical  with,  the  New  Zealand  In- 
dustrial Conciliation  and  Arbitration  Act  which 
is  the  subject  of  Mr.  Lloyd's  book.  There  are 
theorists  and  observers  in  Great  Britain  who 
think  that  the  Victorian  law  is  more  likely  to  be 
imitated  in  the  large  industrial  countries  of  the 
world  than  that  of  New  Zealand,  and  that  its  nar- 
rower scope  and  more  calculable  effects  render 
it  a  less  venturesome  and  hazardous  experiment. 
There  is  no  doubt  something  to  be  said  for  this 
contention  if  the  object  of  the  reformer  be  mere- 
ly to  better  the  conditions  of  the  most  helpless 
class  of  workers  in  the  worst-sweated  industries. 
But  if  the  object  be  to  find  a  remedy  also  for 
those  conflicts  of  capital  with  labour  which  have 
agitated  the  industrial  world  in  Europe,  Ameri- 
ca and  elsewhere  for  the  past  century,  which  in- 
crease in  area  and  bitterness  with  each  decade 
and  which  constitute  one  of  the  greatest  puz- 
zles of  social  students  in  the  old  world  and  the 
new,  then  the  Victorian  Wages  Board  law  is 
not  what  is  wanted. 

The  object  of  the  New  Zealand  Conciliation 
and  Arbitration  Act  is  not  only  to  stamp  out 
sweating  and  improve  the  workers'  condition. 


Introduction  ix 

These,  indeed,  were  not  its  immediate  aims 
though  they  are  consequences — and  very  valu- 
able consequences — which  have  flowed  from  it. 
Its  special  and  primary  object  was  to  bring 
about  industrial  peace,  and,  in  so  far  as  it  has 
substituted  orderly  and  methodical  hearing  and 
adjudication  by  impartial  state  tribunals  for  the 
loose,  violent  and  haphazard  methods  of  the 
strike  and  the  lockout,  it  has  succeeded  in  bring- 
ing about  industrial  peace. 

True  it  is  that  an  act  under  which  one  of 
the  parties  to  an  industrial  dispute  has  the 
right  to  bring  all  other  parties  before  a  pub- 
lic tribunal  does,  in  effect,  if  general  use  be 
made  of  it,  involve  a  great  deal  of  state 
regulation  of  labour.  That  is  what  has  come 
about  in  New  Zealand,  and  those  who  look 
upon  state  interference  as  anathema,  and  think 
that  any  law  which  increases  it  is  necessar- 
ily bad,  will  regard  the  arbitration  law  with 
abhorrence.  So  far,  however,  as  New  Zea- 
land is  concerned,  a  sufficient  answer  to  this 
objection  is  easily  found.  In  the  first  place, 
if  the  parties  to  labour  disputes  there  wish  to 
settle  their  own  differences  in  their  own  way, 
the  state  does  not  meddle  with  them.  In  the 
second  place.  New  Zealand  is  perhaps  the  most 
simple  and  complete  little  democracy  in  the 
world ;  legislation  is  facile,  and  were  any  law 
found  tyrannical  or  intolerable  it  would  have 
very  short  shrift  indeed.  In  New  Zealand,  I 
may  remark,  the  most  powerful  class  in  politics 
are  not  the  wage-earners  but  the  farmers. 

The  Arbitration  Act  has  not  yet  had  a  very 


X  Introduction 

long  life.  It  was  passed  in  1894  and  did  not 
come  into  active  use  until  more  than  twelve 
months  afterwards.  Its  popularity  and  useful- 
ness have,  however,  steadily  increased,  and  most 
of  the  organised  industries  of  the  colony  are 
now  being  carried  on  under  the  conditions  laid 
down  by  its  Conciliation  Boards  and  Arbitration 
Court.  It  should  be  stated  frankly  that  most  of 
the  cases  brought  before  these  tribunals  have 
been  initiated  by  trade-unions  and  that  most  of 
the  decisions  have  granted  concessions  of  more 
or  less  value  to  the  plaintiffs.  The  explanation 
of  this  is  found  in  the  prosperity  which  has 
marked  the  last  four  or  five  years  in  New  Zea- 
land. The  labour  market  has  been  a  rising  mar- 
ket since  the  Arbitration  Act  came  into  use. 
Under  the  old  conditions  the  workers  whose 
wages  had  been  cut  down  in  the  dull  times  of 
the  previous  decade  would  have  struck  on  a 
rising  market  as  they  strike  elsewhere.  Instead 
of  striking  on  a  rising  market  they  have  arbi- 
trated on  a  rising  market,  and  instead  of 
the  industries  of  New  Zealand  being  convulsed 
and  disorganised  the  factories  have  not  been 
closed  through  labour  troubles  for  one  single 
day. 

Next  to  the  wide  use  which  has  been  made  of 
the  law  in  the  colony,  the  most  striking  feature 
of  its  history  has  been  the  respect  that  has  been 
paid  to  its  decisions.  Where,  as  in  certain  cases, 
these  have  been  disappointing  to  the  trade-un- 
ions they  have  been  loyally  obeyed ;  and  though 
in  a  few  instances  the  same  cannot  be  said  for 
the  employers,  the  recalcitrants  have  not  been 


Introduction  xi 

many,  they  have  not  been  employers  of  great 
size  or  standing,  and  their  attempts  at  resistance 
or  evasion  have  been  sufficiently  dealt  vv^ith  by 
small  fines  and  very  moderate  penalties. 

The  only  serious  argument — beyond  the  theo- 
retical objection  to  state  interference  in  any 
form — v^hich  has  been  brought  against  the  law 
by  English  writers  has  been  a  statement  that  , 
it  has  hampered  enterprise  and  checked  the  --^ 
growth  of  manufactures  in  the  colony.  New  /f 
Zealanders  know  this  to  be  quite  baseless,  for 
they  know  that  the  manufactures  of  their  colony 
have  fully  participated  in  the  prosperity  of  the 
last  quinquennium.  For  some  years  past,  la- 
bour in  almost  every  trade  has  been  fully  em- 
ployed, the  numbers  of  the  workless  have  fallen 
progressively,  fresh  factories  have  been  opened, 
fresh  buildings  erected,  and  the  shopkeepers 
who  deal  with  the  working  classes  admit  that 
business  is  better  and  bad  debts  fewer  than  at 
any  time  in  the  last  twenty  years  in  the  colony. 
The  annual  reports  of  the  Chambers  of  Com- 
merce and  the  periodical  reviews  of  trade  and 
business  published  by  the  New  Zealand  newspa- 
pers on  both  sides  in  politics  tell  the  same  tale. 
But  the  briefest  and  most  convincing  argument 
for  disabusing  the  mind  of  any  one  who  may 
fancy  that  the  New  Zealand  Arbitration  Act 
has  hampered  industry  is  to  be  found  in  the  fol- 
lowing figures  which  give  the  hands  employed 
in  the  registered  factories  of  the  colony  for  the 
last  five  years.  It  may  be  explained  that  "fac- 
tory" in  New  Zealand  means  workshop,  small 
or  large,  and  that  registration  is  universal. 


xii  Introduction 

Year.  Hands  Employed.  Increase. 

1895  29,879    4,028 

1896  32,387    2,508 

1897  36,918    4,531 

1898  39-672       2,754 

1899  45-305        5-633 

It  may  be,  and  indeed,  has  been,  stated  that  the 
strength  of  the  law  cannot  be  fully  tested  until 
some  powerful  organisation  of  labour  or  capital 
defies  the  decision  of  the  court  and  is  success- 
fully dealt  with.  English  doctrinaire  critics  lay 
great  stress  on  this  and  are  wont  to  ask  tri- 
umphantly what  could  be  done  with  the  mem- 
bers of  a  large  trade-union  without  funds  to 
enable  them  to  pay  the  court's  penalties  for  dis- 
obedience and  at  the  same  time  stubbornly  de- 
termined not  to  go  to  work  under  the  conditions 
laid  down  by  the  court.  The  answer  to  that  is 
surely  found  in  a  study  of  the  history  of  la- 
bour disputes.  These  show  that  it  is  not  unions 
destitute  of  funds  which  carry  on  stubborn  and 
ultimately  successful  strikes.  And  if  impecuni- 
ous workers  cannot  successfully  cope  with  the 
antagonism  of  employers  whose  resources  are 
after  all  limited,  how  can  they  expect  to  cope 
with  the  power  of  a  state  tribunal  whose  will 
is  not  to  be  bent,  which  has  no  factory  to  be 
closed  or  business  to  be  injured,  and  which  is 
backed  by  the  forces  of  law  and  public  opinion? 

To  my  mind,  however,  the  best  recommenda- 
tion of  the  New  Zealand  law  is  just  that  it  has 
not,  so  far,  led  to  any  desperate  trial  of  strength 
of  this  kind.     By  applying  the  good  old  motto 


Introduction  xiii 

that  prevention  is  better  than  cure  it  has  taken 
labour  disputes  in  hand  before  they  have  reached 
that  pitch  at  which  the  passions  of  the  dispu- 
tants on  both  sides  are  inflamed  and  impel  them 
to  wild  speech  and  wilder  action;  it  gets  at  la- 
bour and  capital  before  they  have  come  to  the 
unreasonable  stage  of  their  quarrel.  It  frankly 
accepts  their  two  irresistible  tendencies  in  mod- 
ern times ;  the  first  of  which  is  that  they  will  dif- 
fer and  the  second  that  they  will  organise  in 
order  to  settle  their  differences.  There  are  phil- 
anthropists who  think  that  the  remedy  for  their 
conflicts  is  found  in  urging  them  not  to  quarrel 
and  not  to  organise ;  there  are  some  who  would 
sternly  forbid  them  to  organise.  The  New 
Zealand  law,  on  the  contrary,  frankly  encour- 
ages their  organisation,  admits  that  they  are 
bound  to  differ,  and  only  insists  that  if  they 
cannot  settle  their  differences  in  a  friendly  and 
peaceable  manner  they  must  go  to  the  state, 
which  will  provide  them  with  machinery  for 
doing  so. 

The  state,  in  New  Zealand,  is  the  people,  and 
the  people  being  vitally  interested  in  labour  bat- 
tles, has  surely  the  right  to  say  to  the  parties 
that  their  disputes  shall  be  adjusted  in  such  a 
manner  as  not  to  damage  the  community  of 
which  they  are  members  and  for  the  benefit  of 
which  in  the  end  their  industry  is  carried  on. 

For  the  rest,  the  Act's  methods  are  elastic,  and 
the  proceedings  of  its  tribunals  are  open,  pains- 
taking and  fair. 

I  am,  of  course,  in  no  way  responsible  for 
the    views    expressed    by    Mr.    Lloyd    in    this 


xiv  Introduction 

volume.  Before  Mr.  Lloyd  went  to  New  Zea- 
land, I  had  never  seen  him,  and  it  was  not  until 
he'  had  been  to  the  colony  and  returned  from  it 
with  his  views  upon  the  Arbitration  Act  fully 
formed,  that  I  had  the  pleasure  of  meeting  him. 
But  though  his  opinions  are  his  own,  I  may  be 
allowed  to  say  that,  as  regards  his  statements 
on  matters  of  fact,  I  believe  them  to  be  correct 
throughout.  In  America  and  Europe  his  stand- 
ing as  a  writer  will,  of  course,  ensure  his  book  a 
welcome  among  all  social  students ;  and  both  in 
Great  Britain  and  the  colonies  I  feel  no  doubt 
that  those  who  are  interested  in  the  experiment 
he  here  describes  will  gladly  welcome  the  impar- 
tial opinion  of  an  able  American  observer  stand- 
ing absolutely  apart  from  the  political  parties  of 
New  Zealand. 

W.  P.  Reeves. 

London,  England,  March,  1900. 


A    COUNTRY 
WITHOUT    STRIKES. 


A  COUNTRY  WITHOUT  STRIKES 


CHAPTER    I. 

SOMETHING   NEW    IN   STRIKES   AND 
LOCKOUTS. 

When  I  landed  in  New  Zealand  in  February, 
1899,  I  found  it,  like  the  rest  of  the  world,  in 
the  flooding  tide  of  a  new  prosperity;  the  rev- 
enue of  the  government  increasing,  manufac- 
tures extending,  new  enterprises  starting,  labour 
busy. 

As  always  happens  in  a  country  so  fortunate  s 
as  to  have  workingmen  intelligent  enough  to 
know  what  is  going  on,  those  here  knew  about 
this  rising  market  and  were  striking  everywhere 
for  their  share  of  it.  They  were  demanding 
more  wages,  shorter  hours,  better  conditions,  or 
at  least  the  restoration  of  advantages  which  had 
been  taken  from  them  during  the  preceding 
years  of  "the  lean  kine." 

I  knew,  of  course,  by  my  reading,  somethijig 
about  the  new  way  these  things  were  managed 
here,  and  almost  my  first  request  was  to  be  taken 


2  A  Country  Without  Strikes 

to  see  a  New  Zealand  strike.  My  friend  smiled 
and  led  the  way.  We  were  driven  to  a  charm- 
ing spot  in  Christchurch,  bordering  on  "The 
Domain,"  or  public  park  on  the  banks  of  the 
Avon  where  English  willows  turn  their  hoar 
leaves  to  a  stream  as  beautiful  as  its  namesake. 
We  approached  an  interesting  Gothic  building 
which  did  not  look  like  a  factory  or  trades-union 
hall,  and  passed  into  a  long,  open  room,  with 
vaulted  ceilings,  galleries,  stained  glass  win- 
dows, all  familiar  to  any  one  who  has  been  in 
the  Parliament  buildings  at  Westminster.  It 
was  a  New  Zealand  miniature  of  the  House  of 
Commons — the  Hall  of  the  Provincial  Assem- 
bly of  Canterbury. 

A  table  ran  along  the  centre  of  the  hall ;  on 
each  side  of  it  three  or  four  men,  the  brighter 
toilets  and  the  better  grooming  of  those  on  one 
side  showing  them  to  belong  to  a  different  class 
from  those  on  the  other,  whose  plain  clothing 
and  furrowed  faces  bespoke  them  to  be  working- 
men.  They  were  busy  in  controversy,  and  be- 
tween them,  at  the  head  of  the  table  in  the  white 
wig  of  an  English  chief- justice,  was  a  judge  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  New  Zealand.  On 
benches  under  the  windows  were  newspaper  re- 
porters, and  a  number  of  spectators  belonging 
evidently  to  the  same  classes  of  society  as  the 
men  sitting  beside  each  other  at  the  table. 


In  the  Court  Room  3 

I  know  a  strike  when  I  see  it,  for  I  have  wit- 
nessed a  good  many,  including  the  Pullman 
strike  at  Chicago,  but  this  looked  like  no  meet- 
ing of  strikers  I  had  ever  known.  It  looked  like 
a  court,  though,  again,  not  like  any  I  had  ever 
seen  before. 

But  it  was  both.  "For  five  years,"  said  my 
New  Zealand  friend,  "there  has  not  been  a 
strike  or  a  lockout  in  New  Zealand  that  has  not 
been  held  in  a  court-room." 

This  was  my  introduction  to  the  Compulsory 
Arbitration  law  of  New  Zealand. 

"But  compulsory  arbitration,  you  know,"  said 
a  young  Englishman  who  was  with  us,  fresh 
from  Oxford  and  post-graduate  courses  of  po- 
litical economy  from  John  Stuart  Mill  to 
Boehm-Bawerk,  "is  an  impossibility;  it  is  a  con- 
tradiction in  terms.  You  cannot  make  men 
work  whether  they  want  to  or  not,  you  cannot 
compel  men  to  arbitrate  nor  fix  prices  by  law. 
You  cannot  get  practical  decisions  in  business 
matters  from  judges  who  'know  nothing  of 
business,'  you  cannot  settle  wages  and  condi- 
tions of  labour  by  laws  of  the  legislature  in- 
stead of  the  laws  of  supply  and  demand." 

"That  's  what  all  'the  authorities'  of  the  busi- 
ness world  and  political  economy  say,"  our  New 
Zealander  replied,  "but  what  they  say  we  can't 
do,  we  are  doing.     Under  this  law,  when  with- 


4  A  Country  Without  Strikes 

out  it  they  would  have  stopped,  for  five  years 
not  a  workingman  nor  capitalist  has  stopped 
giving  or  taking  work  on  account  of  any  differ- 
ence as  to  wages,  or  any  other  matter  at  issue 
between  them,  and  yet  during  all  that  time  they 
have  been  in  sharp  and  frequent  disputes  on 
many  questions." 

''The  New  Zealanders  must  be  a  nation  of 
visionaries,"  the  Oxford  man  insisted,  "to  be 
willing  to  venture  on  such  a  Utopian  experi- 
ment." 

''On  the  contrary,  'the  experiment,'  instead  of 
being  a  scheme  of  visionaries,  or  Utopians,  or 
theorists,  was  forced  upon  us  by  the  hard  pres- 
sure of  actual  facts  and  by  intolerable  evils, 
in  the  paralysis  of  industry  and  the  disturbance 
of  peace,  for  which  all  other  remedies  have 
failed.  The  experiment  was  entered  upon  with 
the  consent  substantially  of  all  parties  in  Parlia- 
ment, including  some  of  the  most  successful 
business  men  in  the  colony.  It  is  an  experiment, 
we  admit,  and  a  bold  one,  without  parallel  any- 
where else  in  the  world,  but  it  is  a  successful  ex- 
periment, and  so  far  has  done  lots  of  good 
and  hurt  nobody."  The  traveller  is  not  in  New 
Zealand  very  long  before  he  finds  out  that  its 
people  are  a  little  proud  of  their  "experiments," 
and  it  takes  him  only  a  little  while  longer  to 
make  up  his  mind  that  they  have  good  reason  to 
be  proud  of  them. 


Civil  War  5 

"With  your  Conciliation  and  Arbitration 
Boards,  public  and  private,  and  your  Conseils  des 
Prud'hommes  and  the  like,"  continued  our 
friend,  "you  are  all  saying  to  the  warring  forces 
of  labour  and  capital,  'you  ought  to  arbitrate.' 
New  Zealand  is  the  first  to  say,  'If  you  ought 
to  arbitrate,  you  shall  arbitrate.'  " 

The  newly  arrived  traveller  hardly  knows 
which  way  to  turn,  there  are  so  many  novelties 
to  see  in  a  country  like  New  Zealand.  Its  whole 
career  has  been  a  continuous  experiment,  from 
zoological  to  sociological,  and  it  has  been  speci- 
ally experimenting  in  business  and  politics  for 
thirty  years,  ever  since  Sir  Julius  Vogel,  in  1869, 
established  the  government  in  life  insurance, 
which  it  has  made  a  great  success  against  the 
competition  of  the  principal  private  companies 
of  Australia,  Europe  and  America.  But  the 
statements  my  New  Zealand  friend  whispered  to 
me,  as  we  stood  under  the  gallery  of  the  Arbi- 
tration Court,  decided  me  that,  compulsory  arbi- 
tration had  the  first  claim  on  my  curiosity. 

New  Zealand  had  a  terrible  strike  nine  years 
ago,  known  as  the  Maritime  Strike.  It  devas- 
tated the  whole  of  Australasia.  It  was  a  war 
between  classes,  the  only  two  classes  practically 
which  remain  to  be  amalgamated  in  modern 
society.  It  spread  from  the  shipping  world, 
where  it  began,  into  a  great  circle  of  related  in- 
dustries.     Merchants   and   their   clerks   drove 


6  A  Country  Without  Strikes 

drays  and  loaded  and  unloaded  merchandise; 
shipowners  and  their  sons  and  friends  took  the 
place  of  sailors  and  stokers;  the  country  went 
to  the  edge  of  civil  war.  The  New  Zealand 
Minister  of  Labour,  the  Honourable  William 
Peniber  Reeves,  set  himself,  in  the  following 
year,  to  find  a  remedy  to  prevent  the  recurrence 
of  struggles  not  less  terrible  in  the  sum-total  of 
losses  than  war  itself.  There  had  been  no  com- 
pulsory arbitration  anywhere  to  serve  as  a  guide; 
there  had  been  no  public  conciliation  or  arbitra- 
tion in  New  Zealand  itself  to  supply  any  prece- 
dent. "But  New  Zealand,"  the  New  Zealander 
who  was  giving  me  these  points  continued,  with 
pardonable  pride,  "did  not  waste  any  time  in  be- 
ginning where  others  had  begun.  It  took  up 
the  evolution  where  the  others  had  dropped  it, 
and  carried  it  forward.  It  was  characteristic 
of  the  country  that  the  new  opportunity  found 
the  new  men  fit  for  it." 

The  Maritime  Strike  was  over,  but  other  com- 
ing labour  troubles  clouded  on  the  horizon,  and, 
most  threatening  of  these,  a  possible  strike  of  the 
government  employes  on  the  railroads.  This, 
as  the  Minister  of  Labour  said  to  Parliament,  all 
must  admit,  would  be  the  greatest  possible 
calamity  that  could  befall. 

With  the  memory  of  the  Maritime  Strike  be- 
fore him  and  these  other  dangers  threatening, 


No  Precedents  7 

the  Minister  of  Labour  set  himself  to  study  the 
most  difficult  of  labour  problems.  He  investi- 
gated all  that  has  been  done  in  other  countries 
— in  England,  France,  Germany,  the  Australian 
Colonies  and  the  United  States.  The  speeches 
in  which  he  reported  the  results  of  his  studies  to 
Parliament  in  introducing  the  bill  which  he 
framed,  stand  to-day  as  the  best  study  which  has 
been  made  of  arbitration  and  conciliation.  He 
found,  as  he  said  in  offering  his  bill,  that  the  ex- 
perience of  other  countries,  confined  as  it  had 
been  to  voluntary  conciliation  and  arbitration, 
was  a  record  of  failure  wherever  it  was  most  im- 
portant that  it  should  succeed,  and  of  success 
only  when  success  was  comparatively  of  little 
consequence.  Almost  never  was  any  great 
strike  settled  or  prevented  by  voluntary  concili- 
ation and  arbitration ;  only  the  little  ones. 

He  read  all  that  has  been  written  by  the  au- 
thorities on  conciliation  and  arbitration,  and 
found  nothing  new  in  them.  They  all  seemed, 
he  said,  to  have  copied  from  each  other. 

He  reviewed  for  Parliament  and  the  New 
Zealand  public  the  three  laws  of  Great  Britain, 
passed  in  1824,  1867,  and  1872,  all  three  dead 
letters  on  the  statute  book. 

The  Conseils  des  Prud'hommes  of  France, 
which  have  had  eighty  years  of  practical  work- 
ing, are  a  valuable  example  of  what  may  be  done 


8  A  Country  Without  Strikes 

by  state  intervention  in  industrial  matters,  but 
they  have  not  put  an  end  to  strikes. 

"There  are  many  and  grievous  strikes  in 
France,  because  these  Conseils  des  Prud'hommes 
are  not  allowed  to  deal  with  strikes  or  wages 
and  have  no  power  to  enforce  their  decisions." 

He  found  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Con- 
ciliation and  Arbitration  one  of  the  most  suc- 
cessful and  practical  tribunals  in  the  world.  It 
was  in  fact  almost  "an  ideal  tribunal,  its  one 
fault  being  that  it  is  voluntary.  It  does  a  great 
deal  of  good,  but  if  you  look  through  the  record 
of  its  cases,  you  will  find  a  doleful  and  depress- 
ing list  of  failures  as  well.  In  small  cases  the 
intervention  of  the  board  had  been  successful, 
that  is,  if  passion  has  not  been  roused.  In  larger 
cases,  or  where  one  side  has  had  its  passion 
roused,  the  board  has  not  been  so  successful,  and 
the  strikes  have  had  to  go  on."  But  he  found 
it  "the  one  voluntary  state  tribunal  that  seems  to 
do  good  work." 

Mr.  Reeves  studied  his  subject  for  years.  He 
told  the  Parliament  there  was  not  an  industrial 
conciliation  and  arbitration  tribunal  in  any  part 
of  the  world,  the  working  of  which  he  had  not 
examined.  His  conclusion  was,  "that  in  Eng- 
land, throughout  Europe,  in  America,  and  in 
Australia,  voluntary  arbitration  has  failed  for 
generations.      It  is  necessary  to  try  something 


Conciliation  does  not  Conciliate      9 

else,  and  I  ask  you  to  try  compulsory  arbi- 
tration." 

A  very  striking  instance  of  the  failure  of  vol- 
untary arbitration  was  furnished  by  the  recent 
experience  of  the  neighbouring  colony  of  New 
South  Wales.  That  colony  had,  the  year  be- 
fore New  Zealand  acted,  passed  an  act  which 
seemed  to  be,  Mr.  Reeves  said,  "a  very  nice  act." 
Immediately  thereafter  New  South  Wales  saw 
the  three  most  disastrous  and  ruinous  strikes  the 
colony  had  had  since  its  foundation.  These 
strikes  took  place  as  soon  as  the  act  was  passed, 
and  it  proved  a  dead  letter.  If  the  act  had  not 
been  passed,  these  strikes  would  have  compelled 
the  Legislature  of  New  South ^Wales  to  legislate 
in  an  effectual  way,  but,  as  it  was,  the  lea.ders 
had  a  reason  in  the  existence  of  the  law  for 
doing  nothing.  As  a  result  of  these  three 
strikes,  the  CoaL  Miners'  Strike,  the  Broken  Hill 
Strike,  and  the  Shearers'  Strike,  homes  had 
been  broken  up,  employers  ruined,  the  town  of 
Broken  Hill  made  bankrupt,  men  had  lost  their 
homes  and  their  work,  their  families  had  been 
disrupted,  labour  leaders  had  been  thrown  in  jail, 
to  be  kept  there  for  years,  and  a  very  bitter  class 
feeling  excited  which  still  rages  throughout 
New  South  Wales. 

"That,"  said  Mr.  Reeves,  "has  been  the  result 
of  trusting  to  voluntary  tribunals." 


lo        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

He  showed  that,  at  the  time  he  was  speaking, 
there  had  been  in  Europe  in  the  preceding  five 
years  nearly  two  thousand  strikes,  and  through- 
out the  world  at  large  many  thousands  of  strikes 
involving  the  loss  of  hundreds  of  millions  of 
dollars,  besides  other  things  not  to  be  counted  in 
money.  In  proposing  compulsory  arbitration, 
he  said : 

"I  could  not  bring  in  a  bill  of  a  weaker  char- 
acter than  this  without  knowing  that  it  would 
be  a  hollow  sham.  I  have  studied  the  history 
of  conciliation  and  arbitration  in  the  various 
countries  of  the  world,  both  old  and  new,  and  I 
have  been  forced  to  this  conclusion  that,  if  you 
pass  a  merely  optional  measure,  you  will  put  a 
thing  on  the  statute  book  that  will  have  no  effect 
whatever  in  assuaging  the  evils  arising  through 
industrial  contests.  Only  too  thankful  should  I 
be  to  pass  an  optional  measure  now,  and  thus 
save  myself  all  the  friction  attending  this  fight, 
and  also  save  myself  the  great  responsibility  of 
passing  a  measure  with  a  compulsory  clause,  but 
I  cannot  pass  a  useless  bill." 

"Strikes,"  he  said  again,  "have  done  a  great 
deal  of  good,  but  strikes  are  war.  War  is  a 
clumsy  and  barbarous  way  of  settling  differences 
between  nationalities,  and  strikes  are  the  most 
clumsy  and  barbarous  way  I  know  of  settling 
industrial  difficulties." 


Labour  Asks  for  Compulsion       i  r 

"Victory  by  either  side  is  not  a  proof  that  the 
side  which  lost  was  wrong,  or  that  that  which 
won  was  right." 

The  trade-unions  of  New  Zealand,  during  the 
discussion  of  this  matter  which  was  before  Par- 
liament for  years,  held  up  the  hands  of  the 
Minister  of  Labour  by  passing  resolutions  de- 
manding compulsion,  and  many  of  the  leading 
capitalists  and  employers  of  the  colony  gave 
him^their  support. 

He  quoted  to  Parliament  a  telling  remark 
made  to  him  by  a  Manchester  merchant,  a  man 
who  had  had  great  experience  in  connection 
with  unions. 

"If  you  are  to  have  arbitration  at  all,  it  would 
be  of  no  use,  if  you  do  not  make  the  awards 
compulsory.  Every  man  who  thinks  he  is  going 
to  lose  a  strike  is  ready  to  go  to  arbitration,  while 
the  man  who  thinks  he  is  going  to  win  will  not 
have  it." 

Conciliation  boards  are  virtually  useless  un- 
less there  is  in  the  background  an  arbitration 
court,  and  this  court  must  have  compulsory 
powers. 

That  the  bill  which  he  drafted  was  an  experi- 
ment, "an  absolute  experiment,"  Mr.  Reeves  ad- 
mitted. He  claimed  only,  he  said,  that  "It  was 
an  honest  attempt  to  solve  the  most  difficult  of 
labour  problems.     It  is  an  experiment  that  is 


12        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

worth  trying.  Whatever  it  does, .it  cannot  do  a 
vast  amount  of  harm  to  the  colony." 

The  opponents  of  the  bill  had  said  that  such 
a  question  must  not  be  dealt  with  in  an  experi- 
mental way. 

"In  Heaven's  name,"  replied  Mr.  Reeves,  "if 
we  are  not  to  deal  with  it  in  an  experimental 
way,  how  are  we  to  deal  with  it  at  all  ?" 

"Every  good  and  great  change  in  the  world 
has  been  an  experiment.  The  man  who  discov- 
ered America  made  an  experiment.  Every 
great  scientific  invention  has  been  arrived  at  by 
experiment,  and,  in  the  same  way,  in  legislation 
we  have  to  make  experiments." 

The  Minister  of  Labour  admitted  the  imper- 
fections of  this  bill.  "It  is  ridiculous,"  he  said, 
"to  suppose  that  at  one  bound  this  Parliament 
can  solve  a  problem  that  has  puzzled  the  most 
earnest  thinkers  for  generations."  But  he  be- 
lieved that,  if  the  experiment  had  a  fair  trial,  it 
would  succeed,  and  that  "New  Zealand  will 
have  set  an  example  to  the  civilised  world  which 
will  be  widely  followed  in  days  to  come." 

Mr.  Reeves  submitted  his  first  bill  to  Parlia- 
ment in  1892.  It  was  offered  again  in  1893  and 
in  1894.  Three  times  it  passed  the  lower  house 
before  the  upper  house  would  allow  it  to  become 
a  law.  So  convincingly  had  the  Minister  of 
Labour  marshalled  the  results  of  his  studies  of 


Parliament  Almost  Unanimous     1 3 

conciliation  and  arbitration  in  other  countries, 
and  defended  his  main  point  that  compulsion 
was  indispensable,  that  the  bill  at  last,  in  1894, 
passed  without  change  in  its  fundamental  prin- 
ciples, and  with  the  concurrence  of  the  leader  of 
the  opposition  and  several  of  its  most  important 
members — a  most  unusual  circumstance  in  a 
country  where  party  spirit  runs  as  high  as  it 
does  in  New  Zealand. 

"I  believe,"  the  leader  of  the  opposition  said, 
"that  we  have  to  a  great  extent  the  very  best  bill 
that  can  be  devised  in  the  interest  of  the 
colony." 

The  act  has  now  been  in  operation  five  years, 
and  with  such  general  approval  that  recent 
amending  acts  have  been  passed  almost  without 
dissent.  The  law  was  proposed  as  an  experiment 
— it  is  still  regarded  as  an  experiment  by  its  au- 
thor, and  even  by  the  judges  of  the  Arbitration 
Court  and  by  the  country — but  so  far  it  has 
proved  a  workable  experiment.  .if 

There   has   not   been   a   strike  by   organised     \ 
AdhouT,  with  one  insignificant  exception,  since     j 
I  its  passage.     It  has  harmonised  all  the  labour  y 
troubles   brought   under   its   cognisance.      The 
courts  have  been  constantly  strengthening  them- 
selves and  the  acts  by  their  administration  of  it. 
Capital  has  not  fled,  but,  on  the  contrary,  in- 
dustries of  all  kinds  have  been  flourishing  as 


14        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

never  before.  There  have  been  a  few  attempts 
to  evade  or  disregard  the  decisions  of  the 
courts;  these  the  judges  have  proved  them- 
selves fully  able  to  control  and  punish.  Al- 
though the  decisions  have  almost  all  been  in 
favor  of  the  men,  because  it  is  a  time  of  pros- 
perity and  their  demands  have  been  made  on  a 
rising  market,  the  employers  have  found  no 
serious  embarrassment  in  complying  with  them, 
and  some  of  the  employers  are  the  strongest 
supporters  of  the  measure. 

To  declare  a  new  social  right  and  to  create  a 
new  court  to  enforce  it  in  a  field  where  there 
was  nothing  to  guide  and  nothing  to  be  copied, 
and  where,  still  worse,  all  the  authorities  deny 
the  right  and  predict  complete  failure  for  the 
enforcement,  was  certainly  as  bold  a  venture  as 
reformer  entrusted  with  power  ever  attempted. 
Merely  to  draft  so  unprecedented  a  law  with 
such  skill  that  it  could  go  into  practical  opera- 
tion as  this  has  done,  is  a  legislative  feat  of  the 
highest  order. 

Speaking  of  the  pains  he  had  taken,  Mr. 
Reeves  told  Parliament,  "I  have  had  this  bill 
drafted,  and  in  some  cases  re-drafted,  and 
drafted  and  drafted  again  and  again." 

A  law  essaying  compulsory  arbitration  in 
South  Australia  has  been  on  the  books  about  the 
same  time  as  the  New  Zealand  law  and  remains 


Failure  in  South  Australia         1 5 

a  dead  letter,  not  a  single  case  when  I  was  there 
having  been  tried  under  it. 

The  lawyer,  journalist,  poet,  politician,  who, 
as  Minister  of  Labour,  had  the  wit  to  contrive 
a  measure  which  could  give  five  years  indus- 
trial peace  to  his  country,  is  not  likely  to  be  as- 
signed a  back  seat  among  social  inventors. 
However  his  experiment  may  turn  out,  it  is  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  most  original  pieces  of  work 
done  in  modern  times.  But  if  the  "experiment" 
ripens  into  an  established  institution,  no  one  will 
be  able  to  dispute  the  claim  of  Mr.  Reeves  to 
stand  in  the  front  rank  of  the  geniuses  who  have 
proved  themselves  able  to  affect  human  destiny 
for  good,  by  carrying  constitutional  and  politi- 
cal development  a  step  farther,  bettering  the  life 
of  man  with  man  by  bringing  new  evils  under 
the  dominion  of  the  old  principles  of  social  jus- 
tice and  mercy. 

When  I  asked  Mr.  Edward  Tregear,  the  ac- 
complished Secretary  for  Labour,  who  has  the 
congenial  task  of  carrying  on  the  work  Mr. 
Reeves  began,  for  a  copy  of  the  Compulsory 
Arbitration  Law,  he  handed  me  a  bulky  pam- 
phlet entitled  "The  Labour  Laws  of  New  Zea- 
land." 

The  arbitration  law  has  to  be  studied  in  sev- 
eral acts  contained  in  this  collection.  There  is 
an  urgent  need  of  a  consolidation  act  for  these 


1 6        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

various  enactments,  and  for  want  of  it  the  task 
of  accurately  ascertaining  the  definite  provisions 
of  the  law  is  a  complicated  one. 
Its  main  points  are : 

1.  It  applies  only  to  industries  in  which  there 
are  trade-unions. 

2.  It  does  not  prevent  private  conciliation  or 
arbitration. 

3.  Conciliation  is  exhausted  by  the  state  be- 
fore it  resorts  to  arbitration. 

4.  If  conciliation  is  unsuccessful,  the  dis- 
putants must  arbitrate. 

5.  Disobedience  of  the  award  may  be  pun- 
ished or  not  at  the  discretion  of  the  court. 

The  compulsion  of  the  law  is  threefold : 
compulsory  publicity,  compulsory  reference  to  a 
disinterested  arbiter — provided  the  disputants 
will  not  arbitrate  voluntarily — compulsory  obe- 
dience to  the  award. 

It  does  not  forbid  nor  prevent  disputes,  but 
makes  the  antagonists  fight  their  battles  in  court 
according  to  a  legal  code  instead  of  the  ordinary 
"rules  of  war." 

There  is  no  "making  men  work  by  law,"  and 
no  "fixing  wages  by  law."  The  law  says  only 
that  if  they  work,  it  must  be  without  strikes  or 
lockouts,  and  that,  if  they  cannot  agree  as  to 
prices,  the  decision  shall  be  left  to  some  impar- 
tial person,  and  not  fought  out. 


The  People  Initiate  17 

In  fuller  detail  these  are  the  principal  features 
of  the  law. 

The  state  takes  no  initiative  in  setting  arbi- 
tration in  motion.  The  law  acts  only  as  one  party 
or  the  other  calls  for  it — and  in  this  the  New 
Zealand  law  differs  from  that  of  South  Australia. 
It  simply  provides  the  law  and  the  tribunal  by 
which  either  party,  employer  or  employed,  may 
sue  and  be  sued  instead  of  striking  or  being 
struck. 

The  Minister  of  Labour  in  submitting  the 
bill  avowed  himself  to  be  in  favour  of  giving  the 
state  an  initiative,  but  he  thought  that  the  peo- 
ple were  not  yet  ready  for  it.  I  found  that 
where,  as  in  South  Australia,  the  arbitration 
law  gives  the  officials  of  the  state  the  power  to 
intervene  of  their  own  motion,  nothing  has  been 
done.  But  in  New  Zealand,  where  the  people 
must  initiate  whatever  is  done,  the  law  has  been 
in  constant  use. 

No  disputes  can  be  considered  except  in 
trades  where  there  are  trade-unions,  and  only 
where  these  trade-unions  have  registered  under 
the  law.  This  is,  first,  to  save  the  court  from 
being  overwhelmed  by  a  flood  of  petty  matters, 
and,  second,  because  the  disputes  that  threaten 
the  peace  and  prosperity  of  society  come  from 
organised  not  unorganised  labour. 

"On  the  whole,"  Mr.  Reeves  said,  "history 


1 8        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

shows  that  the  great  and  dangerous  battles  be- 
tween capital  and  labour — those  which  may  seri- 
ously call  for  state  intervention — occur  only 
where  labour  is  organised." 

There  is  in  this  no  disregard  of  the  interests 
of  the  poorest  and  most  numerous  labourers — 
the  unorganised — for  any  seven  men  can  form  a 
trade-union  under  the  act  and  claim  all  its  privi- 
leges, nor  is  it  in  disregard  of  the  interests  of 
men  in  a  trade  who  are  outside  the  union,  for, 
as  will  be  explained  later,  there  is  a  way  in 
which  their  grievances  can  be  espoused  by  the 
union  in  their  trade.  To  encourage  working- 
men  and  capitalists  to  organise  unions,  they  are 
given  corporate  rights;  they  can  sue  and  be 
sued;  they  can  recover  subscriptions  from  de- 
faulting members,  and  have  power  to  buy  or 
lease  land.  The  law  does  not  interfere  with  the 
right  of  labour  and  capital  to  settle  disputes  by 
private  arbitration,  if  they  wish  to  do  so.  On 
the  contrary,  it  supplies  forms  for  procedure  in 
such  cases  and  provides  for  the  enforcement  of 
the  awards,  if  the  parties  agree  in  advance  that 
this  shall  be  done. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  tribunals :  Boards  of 
Conciliation  and  a  Court  of  Arbitration,  and  in 
both  the  workingmen  and  the  employers  are 
equally  represented  by  men  of  their  own  choice. 
There  is  a  Board  of  Conciliation  in  every  "in- 


Labour  and  Capital  Equal         19 

dustrial  district,"  and  the  country  is  divided 
into  as  many  industrial  districts  by  the  Gov- 
ernor-General as  seems  advisable.  There  is 
but  one  Court  of  Arbitration  for  the  whole 
country. 

The  Boards  of  Conciliation  have  four  to  six 
members,  and  are  chosen  every  three  years  in 
each  district  by  elections  held  separately  by  the 
associations  of  employers  and  the  association  of 
employes,  under  procedure  carefully  arranged 
by  law,  and  under  the  supervision  of  a  govern- 
ment officer  called  the  Clerk  of  Awards.  The 
boards  upon  organisation  elect  as  chairman  an 
outsider,  "  some  impartial  person,"  and  "willing 
to  act."  The  chairman  votes  only  in  case  of 
a  tie. 

The  Court  of  Arbitration  consists  of  three 
persons  who  hold  for  three  years,  appointed  by 
the  Governor-General,  and  of  the  three  ap- 
pointees, one  must  be  chosen  by  him  from  men 
nominated  by  the  workingmen,  and  one  from 
among  men  nominated  by  the  capitalists.  The 
third  is  a  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Court.  This 
democratic  representation  of  labour  and  capital 
insures  to  each  throughout  the  proceedings  that 
their  interests  are  protected  by  men  of  their  own 
class,  familiar  with  the  conditions  of  their  life 
and  industry.  It  insures  that  the  casting  vote 
of  the  chairman  is  given  with  men  by  his  side 


?.o        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

to  make  clear  all  the  technicalities  and  difficul- 
ties of  the  questions  at  issue. 

The  selection  of  a  Judge  of  the  Supreme 
Court  to  preside  and  to  give  the  final  and  deci- 
sive vote,  satisfies  the  contestants  and  the  people 
that  the  state,  on  its  side,  contributes  to  the  in- 
quiry and  the  decision  the  best  that  it  has  of 
dignity,  experience  and  impartiality. 

If  the  question  before  the  board  or  court  is 
of  more  than  usual  complexity,  two  experts  may 
be  chosen  by  the  two  parties  to  act  as  full  mem- 
bers of  the  court,  and  to  see  that  the  decision  is 
made  with  full  understanding  of  all  the  points. 
Experts  are  frequently  called  in  in  this  way. 
For  special  emergencies  there  may  be  special 
boards  elected. 

Neither  board  nor  court  intervene  in  any  dis- 
pute of  their  own  motion,  but  like  other  courts 
only  when  one  of  the  parties  or  both  appears  be- 
fore them.  The  compulsion  in  the  law  is  not 
that  the  state  of  itself  compels  the  parties  to 
arbitrate,  but  that  if  one  desires  to  arbitrate  in- 
stead of  fighting,  the  state  says  the  other  must 
not  fight  but  arbitrate. 

The  moment  either  side  with  a  grievance,  or 
any  apprehension  of  a  strike  or  lockout,  sum- 
mons the  other  before  the  board  or  court,  it 
becomes  a  punishable  offence  for  the  workmen 
to  stop  work,  or  the  employer  to  close  down. 


Looking  Backward  21 

Both  must  keep  on  until  the  board  or  court  has 
come  to  a  final  decision. 

The  law  goes  beyond  this  prohibition  of 
strikes  or  lockouts  while  disputes  are  pending 
before  the  court.  There  must  be  no  strike  or 
lockout  beforehand  to  forestall  such  interven- 
tion. The  act  guards  against  the  probability 
that  workingmen  might  be  discharged,  or  the 
employer  be  left  by  his  men  because  one  side  has 
learned  that  the  other  is  about  to  demand  concili- 
ation or  arbitration.  In  such  cases,  if  there  has 
been  any  such  discharge  or  lockout  to  evade  an 
arbitration,  the  aggrieved  party  may,  at  any 
time  within  six  weeks  after  the  strike  or  the 
lockout,  appeal  to  the  court  and  get  full  consid- 
eration and  redress,  and  the  court  can  stop  the 
strike  which  it  was  denied  the  chance  to  prevent. 

The  necessity  for  such  action  as  this  was 
shown  in  a  case  which  arose  in  South  Australia, 
where  certain  workingmen  resolved  to  try  arbi- 
tration, but  the  employer  getting  wind  of  what 
was  coming,  promptly  discharged  all  his  hands. 
He  then  said  to  the  court  that  it  had  no  jurisdic- 
tion because  there  was  no  dispute  between  him 
and  his  men,  meaning  the  men  he  had  taken  on 
afterwards.  "It  is  quite  true,"  he  said,  "that  I 
had  a  dispute  with  certain  men,  but  they  are  no 
longer  my  employes."  This  New  Zealand 
clause  gives  the  state  power,  if  invoked,  to  step 


2  2        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

in  and  stop  strikes  or  lockouts,  even  though  they 
have  broken  out. 

Employers  can  summon  their  workingmen 
only  as  members  of  a  trade-union,  but  the  men 
can  call  in  individual  employers  as  well  as  asso- 
ciations of  employers ;  otherwise  these  could 
defeat  the  act  by  refusing  to  organise  into  asso- 
ciations. If  the  labourers  or  capitalists  choose  to 
sacrifice  the  benefits  of  the  act  by  giving  up  their 
unions,  they  can  do  so,  but  only  in  ways  pro- 
vided by  law,  and  not  during  the  progress  of 
any  arbitration  nor  to  escape  compliance  with 
an  award.  Workingmen  can  leave  their  unions 
only  by  giving  three  months'  notice. 

Both  the  Boards  of  Conciliation  and  the  Court 
of  Arbitration  have  summary  powers  of  visiting 
any  premises  and  questioning  any  persons  con- 
cerned in  an  industrial  dispute.  They  can 
compel  the  attendance  of  witnesses  and  the  pro- 
duction of  any  books  and  papers  needed,  and 
can  imprison  anyone  refusing  to  obey  their  sum- 
mons. Every  precaution  is  taken  by  the  act  to 
prevent  injurious  publicity  of  the  secrets  of 
business.  Usually  the  hearings  are  public,  so 
that  public  opinion  may  be  properly  informed, 
but  the  court  can  at  any  time,  at  its  own  discre- 
tion, or  the  request  of  any  of  the  parties,  go  into 
secret  session. 

No  lawyer  is  allowed  to  appear  before  the 


Quick  Justice  23 

boards  or  the  court,  except  by  consent  of  both 
parties,  which  is  practically  never  given. 

The  Boards  of  Conciliation  have  no  other 
powers  than  those  of  investigation,  visitation, 
and  intermediation. 

The  proceedings  before  the  boards  and  the 
court  are  very  simple,  informal,  cheap,  and  ex- 
peditious. The  board  is  required  to  make  its 
decisions  within  two  months,  the  court  within 
one  month  after  the  investigation  begins.  An 
association  of  employers  or  workingmen  wish- 
ing to  summon  a  trade-union,  makes  an  applica- 
tion on  a  printed  blank  to  the  board  in  writing, 
which  thereupon  takes  up  the  case. 

"The  board  can  make  all  such  suggestions 
and  do  all  such  things  as  appear  right  and 
proper  to  secure  a  fair  and  equitable  settle- 
ment." 

The  Boards  of  Conciliation  can  make  decis- 
ions, but  the  decisions  are  not  binding,  and  it  is 
the  successful  party,  therefore,  who  must  appeal 
to  the  Court  of  Arbitration. 

The  Court  of  Arbitration  is  a  court  with  or- 
dinary and  extraordinary  powers.  It  can  sum- 
mon any  party  to  a  dispute  which  is  before  it  to 
appear,  and,  if  he  refuses,  can  proceed  without 
him.  It  can  enter  and  investigate  any  premises 
and  question  any  persons  there  without  warrant. 
It  can  permit  any  party  who  might  appear  to 


24        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

have  a  common  interest  in  the  matter  to  be 
joined  in  the  proceedings.  It  can  receive  such 
evidence  as  it  thinks  fit  "whether  strictly  legal 
evidence  or  not."  It  has  the  power  of  other 
magistrates  to  take  evidence  at  a  distance. 
None  of  its  awards  can  be  set  aside  for  any  in- 
formality ;  it  is  required  that  they  be  not  framed 
in  a  technical  manner.  They  cannot  be  ''chal- 
lenged, appealed  against,  reviewed,  quashed, 
or  called  in  question  by  any  court  of  judicature 
on  any  account  whatsoever." 

The  board  is  to  make  its  decision  "according 
to  the  merits  and  substantial  justice  of  the  case," 
and  the  Court  of  Arbitration  "in  such  manner 
as  they  find  to  stand  with  equity  and  good  con- 
science." 

The  members  of  the  board  and  courts  are 
paid  moderately  only  while  sitting  and  wit- 
nesses are  compensated  for  the  loss  of  time  and 
for  their  travelling  expenses,  but  no  costs  are  to 
be  allowed  in  any  case  whatever  for  any  agent, 
counsel  or  solicitor  to  appear  for  either  party. 
The  fees  and  travelling  expenses  of  members  of 
the  court  are  met  out  of  the  general  funds  of  the 
colony.  It  is  felt  to  be  better  public  policy  that 
the  whole  community  should  bear  this  than  to 
run  the  risk  that  poor  men  might  suffer  injustice 
because  they  could  not  afford  the  expense  of  ap- 
pealing for  justice.     The  expenses  of  witnesses 


Insuring  the  Future  25 

are  charged  as  costs  to  the  disputing  parties.  It 
has  been  proposed  that  the  compensation  of  the 
members  of  boards  and  the  court  be  always 
charged  to  the  disputants  in  order  to  prevent 
trivial  and  excessive  htigation,  but  this  has  been 
negatived  for  the  reason  of  pubhc  poHcy  just 
given. 

To  check  frivolous  and  causeless  appeals  to  it, 
the  court  is  authorised  to  dismiss  any  such  cases 
and  to  assess  all  costs  upon  the  offender. 

Business  men  are  protected  from  the  injustice 
of  being  put  to  a  disadvantage,  perhaps  ruinous, 
by  an  award  giving  their  employes  pay,  hours  or 
concessions  which  their  competitors  do  not  have 
to  give.  There  is  a  provision  by  which  all  the 
employers  in  the  district,  or  in  the  whole 
country,  if  the  court  so  decide,  can  be  brought 
in  and  made  parties  to  the  procedure  and  sub- 
ject to  the  award. 

All  trade-unions  concerned  can  be  similarly 
brought  in.  Any  employer  or  association  of 
emplo3'-ers,  and  any  trade-union,  although  not 
summoned  but  wanting  to  appear,  may  be  ad- 
mitted by  the  court. 

The  court  can  adjust  its  decisions  to  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  district  or  country  at  large, 
and  can  vary  them  as  it  thinks  proper  with  re- 
gard to  individuals  or  trades  to  secure  fair  play 
for  all. 


26        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

An  award  settles  wages  or  other  conditions 
in  question  for  two  years,  if  a  shorter  time  is 
not  specified  by  the  court.  Any  person  joining 
any  union  or  association  may  be  made  subject 
to  any  award  which  has  been  previously  ren- 
dered affecting  it. 

Any  workman  may  stop  work  and  any  em- 
ployer shut  down  during  arbitration  or  after 
an  award,  provided  he  can  show  the  court  that 
he  did  so  for  some  good  reason,  such  as  the  un- 
profitableness of  the  business — any  reason  other 
than  to  escape  or  defeat  its  jurisdiction.  But 
if  he  wants  to  resume  during  the  life  of  the 
award,  he  can  do  so  only  by  obeying  all  its 
terms.  The  law  cannot  be  evaded  or  ignored. 
Employers  cannot  escape  it  by  refusing  to  or- 
ganise, for  they  can  be  brought  up  singly.  They 
can  refuse  to  attend  only  at  the  same  risk  as 
in  other  courts  of  having  the  case  go  against 
them  by  default.  If  they  refuse  to  exercise 
their  right  of  electing  representatives  on  the 
boards  and  the  court,  the  state  does  it  for  them. 
The  workmen  in  any  trade  can  keep  themselves 
out  of  reach  of  the  law  by  neglecting  to  organ- 
ise, but  they  would  have  to  be  practically  unani- 
mous in  this,  for  any  seven  of  them  could  form 
a  union  and  bring  every  one  else  concerned,  em- 
ployers and  employes,  organised  or  not,  before 
the  court. 

Violation  of  an  award  is  not  necessarily  an 


Punishment  27 

offence.  It  is  left  to  the  court  to  decide  whether 
such  a  breach  shall  be  punished  or  not.  Of 
course,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  court  does  as  a 
rule  make  disobedience  of  the  award  an  offence 
and  punishable.  But  with  a  practical  foresight, 
which  in  a  new  field  like  this  looks  much  like 
genius,  the  author  of  the  law  left  this  matter 
within  the  discretion  of  the  court. 

"The  court,"  said  Mr.  Reeves,  "might  make 
an  award  which  possibly  any  employer  would 
rather  break  than  attempt  to  carry  out.  It 
might  make  an  award  that  members  of  unions 
would  be  prepared  to  go  to  prison  rather  than 
obey,  and  under  these  circumstances  the  best 
thing  is  to  leave  it  to  the  good  sense  of  the 
court.  We  cannot  picture  to  ourselves  the  in- 
finite diversity  of  cases  that  will  come  before  the 
court.  There  will  be  many  awards  that  can  be 
made  binding  and  some  which  it  would  be  folly 
to  make  binding." 

Trifling  with  the  awards  is  likely  to  prove  an 
expensive  amusement.  The  court  determines 
for  itself  what  constitutes  a  breach  and  does  not 
have  to  define  this  in  advance  at  the  time  of 
making  an  award.  It  may,  at  any  time  during 
the  life  of  its  decision,  adjudge  any  obnoxious 
thing  which  has  been  done  to  be  a  violation  of 
its  award,  and  may  punish  it.  This  is  as  broad 
as  the  powers  of  courts  in  contempt  cases. 

A  penalty  running  up  to  twenty-five  hundred 


28        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

dollars  may  be  imposed  for  violation  of  an 
award.  No  more  than  this  can  be  laid  on  any 
party  and  no  more  than  this  can  be  exacted 
under  any  award  from  all  the  parties  to  it. 

"In  addition  to  that,"  Mr.  Reeves  explains, 
"the  court  has  the  ordinary  power  of  proceeding 
by  committal  or  attachment  against  any  one 
who  defies  it.  This  power  would  be  used  very 
reluctantly  and  sparingly,  should  all  other 
means  fail.  Public  opinion  generally  would 
support  it.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  likely 
to  be  required." 

One  fine  of  twenty-five  hundred  dollars  then 
would  exhaust  all  the  powers  of  punishment  by 
fine  under  one  award,  but  a  business  men's  asso- 
ciation, trust  or  monopol}'-,  or  a  great  trade- 
union,  thinking  to  secure  immunity  for  a  con- 
tinued violation  by  one  payment  of  twenty-five 
hundred  dollars,  would  be  easily  made  subject 
to  a  new  award  and  to  as  many  more  awards  as 
might  be  necessary  to  make  them  good  citizens. 

"No  one  could  by  simply  paying  a  single 
fine,"  says  Mr.  Reeves,  "snap  his  finger  there- 
after at  the  court.  He  could,  of  course,  be 
brought  before  it  again  and  again,  and  might 
have  to  pay  fines  until  he  was  tired." 

The  order  of  the  court  for  such  a  fine  may  be 
filed  in  the  other  courts  and  becomes  enforceable 
as  a  judgment.     If  the  property  of  a  trade- 


An  Anomaly  29 

union  or  association  of  business  men  is  not  suf- 
ficient to  pay  the  fine,  the  individual  members 
are  liable,  but  only  to  the  amount  of  fifty  dollars 
each. 

Through  a  defect  in  the  law  at  first  the  only 
punishment  for  a  violation  of  the  terms  of  a  de- 
cision that  could  be  enforced  was  imprisonment. 
This  was  felt  to  be  so  harsh  a  method  of  dealing 
with  behaviour  but  newly  made  legally  penal, 
that  the  judges  evaded  it  by  taking  advantage 
of  every  possible  technicality,  and  the  working- 
men,  even  where  they  felt  themselves  aggrieved, 
would  not  ask  for  the  infliction  of  so  severe  a 
punishment.  The  law  has  now  been  changed  so 
that  the  money  penalty  can  be  enforced,  and  the 
judges  show  no  hesitation  in  applying  it,  and 
the  offenders  show  no  hesitation  in  submitting. 

Many  of  the  disputants,  knowing  that  there 
is  an  appeal  to  the  Court  of  Arbitration  and  de- 
termined to  take  advantage  of  it,  make  their  ap- 
pearance before  the  Conciliation  Board  little 
more  than  a  formality.  They  frequently  an- 
nounce in  advance  that  they  do  not  mean  to 
abide  by  the  decision  of  the  board.  Since  there 
are  no  means  of  enforcing  its  award,  it  is  the 
successful  party  before  the  board  who  has  to 
appeal.  To  meet  this  anomaly  of  appeal  being 
forced  upon  the  successful  party  and  to  give  the 
Conciliation  Board  a  greater  importance,  it  has 


30       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

been  proposed  to  alter  the  procedure  so  that  the 
loser  would  have  to  appeal.  The  Secretary  for 
Labour  says  on  this  subject,  in  his  report  for 

1897: 

"When  the  whole  Board  of  Conciliation  is 
unanimous,  that  is  to  say,  when  the  employers' 
representatives,  the  workers'  representatives, 
and  the  chairman,  all  agree  that  certain  things 
should  be  done,  the  board  should  have  the  same 
power  as  the  higher  court  to  make  its  award 
binding  on  both  parties.  In  some  cases  at  pres- 
ent, the  time  of  members  of  the  board  is  wasted 
because  the  intention  of  the  litigants  is  to  take 
the  case  to  the  Court  of  Arbitration  under  any 
circumstances  in  order  that  the  award  may  have 
the  force  of  law.  This  is  an  injustice  to  the 
board  and  a  waste  of  public  money." 

Mr.  Reeves  told  Parliament  that  ninety  cases 
out  of  one  hundred  would  probably  be  settled  by 
the  Conciliation  Boards,  and  would  not  go  to 
the  Court  of  Arbitration.  One  of  his  sup- 
porters prophesied  that  the  court  would  not  be 
used  once  in  twenty  years. 

In  practical  operation  only  one  third  of  the 
cases  have  been  settled  by  the  Conciliation 
Board  without  an  appeal  to  the  court,  but  a  large 
majority  of  its  decisions  have  been  sustained 
upon  appeal;  that  is,  in  most  cases,  those  who 
refused  to  abide  by  the  recommendations  of  the 


Hears  Both  Sides  31 

Conciliation  Board,  have  wasted  their  own  and 
their  opponent's  time,  money,  and  pains  b}^  forc- 
ing an  appeal  to  the  court.  This  is  likely  to  be 
recognised  and  to  bring  it  about  in  time  that  the 
appeals  to  the  court  will  become  less  frequent. 

The  law  secures  that  the  public  gets  both 
sides  of  every  dispute,  and  gets  them  from  the 
chosen  representatives  of  each  side.  Public 
opinion  is  the  arbitrator  in  such  matters  in  the 
long  run,  and  the  public  of  New  Zealand  is  the 
only  one  which  has  seen  to  it  that  it  shall  have 
the  facts  on  which  to  form  itself. 

The  government  is  not  obliged  to  arbitrate 
with  its  own  employes  as  the  law  now  stands. 
As  passed  originally  by  Mr.  Reeves,  railroad 
employes,  the  largest  and  most  important  class, 
were  included ;  but  a  change  in  the  system  of 
management  from  Commissioners  to  a  Minis- 
ter of  Railways  took  them  out  from  under  the 
act.  There  is  a  strong  demand  that  the  govern- 
ment shall  not  continue  to  exempt  itself  from 
the  same  rule  it  enforces  on  others.  This  was 
the  only  change  recommended  by  the  annual 
conference  of  the  Trade  and  Labour  Councils  of 
New  Zealand,  at  Christchurch,  in  April,  1899. 


CHAPTER    11. 

THE    SHOEMAKER    STICKS    TO    THE    LAST. 

It  was  more  than  a  year  before  a  case  was 
tried  under  the  act,  but  its  influence  was  felt  im- 
mediately. It  had  been  passed  in  August,  1894, 
to  go  into  effect  in  January,  1895.  The  first  case 
came  up  in  May,  1896.  In  the  meantime,  many 
of  the  trade-unions  and  a  few  associations  of 
employers  registered.  Although  the  law  had 
been  framed  by  one  of  their  friends  and  passed 
with  the  help  of  the  labour  members,  the 
workingmen  looked  the  new  automobile  over 
very  carefully  before  accepting  the  invitation  to 
ride.  Their  scrutiny  satisfied  them  that,  though 
the  act  was  not  perfect,  it  was  a  good  thing. 
Mr.  Reeves  was  able  to  announce  to  Parliament 
by  September,  1895,  that  "sixty-one  trade- 
unions,  the  pick  and  flower  of  the  labour  of  the 
colony,  had  come  in  under  the  original  act  pre- 
pared to  surrender  their  right  to  strike — pre- 
pared to  submit  their  disputes  to  fair  arbitration 
and  conciliation.  Employers,  too,  were  being 
registered  and  more  unions  were  registering." 
32 


Arbitration  that  Arbitrates         33 

He  was  speaking  to  a  bill  which  he  had  sub- 
mitted for  some  improvement  in  the  machinery 
of  the  Arbitration  Courts.  The  main  argument 
which  he  advanced  to  secure  the  support  of  Par- 
liament for  the  amending  bill  shows  on  what 
practical  grounds  this  legislation  for  arbitration 
had  been  entered  upon.  He  warned  the  mem- 
bers that  industrial  troubles  of  the  most  serious 
nature  were  impending  and  likely  to  eventuate 
within  a  few  weeks. 

''There  was  a  reason  and  a  grave  reason  why 
the  arbitration  act  should  be  brought  into  oper- 
ation, and  within  a  few  weeks  brought  into 
operation  it  would  be." 

The  warning  of  Mr.  Reeves  had  reference  to 
threatened  disturbances  in  the  shoe  trade,  which 
had  been  for  years  in  a  disorganised  condition. 
This  time,  thanks  to  the  Arbitration  Act,  the 
outbreak  which  he  feared  was  averted. 

He  was  able  to  announce  a  few  weeks  later  to 
an  interested  house  that  there  had  just  met  in 
Christchurch  an  important  conference  between 
the  federated  boot  manufacturers  and  the  asso- 
ciated unions  of  their  workmen.  The  anxiety 
which  had  been  felt  in  regard  to  that  conference 
was  now  at  an  end.  Both  parties  had  entered 
into  an  agreement  not  to  have  any  strike  or 
lockout,  but  to  refer  any  disputes  to  arbitration. 

"This  was  the  first  practical  use  that  had  been 


34        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

made  of  the  industrial  Conciliation  and  Arbitra- 
tion Act  in  actual  differences  of  opinion  between 
employers  and  employed,  and  the  honourable 
members  would  no  doubt  share  with  the  gov- 
ernment the  pleasure  of  knowing  that  the  em- 
ployment of  the  industrial  Conciliation  and 
Arbitration  Act  should  have  been  of  such  a 
practical  and  friendly  character," 

The  next  year  the  strike  thus  averted  came  up 
but  with  features  never  seen  before.  Instead  of 
all  the  manufacturers  and  all  the  employes 
going  into  a  pitched  industrial  battle,  eleven 
men  represented  all  the  contestants  on  both 
sides,  like  the  champions  in  some  Italian  battle 
in  the  Middle  Ages.  This  was  the  first  case 
under  the  arbitration  law,  and  the  case  has  con- 
tinued to  be  before  the  court,  coming  back  in 
one  shape  or  another  through  all  the  years 
since.  It  was  a  very  important  struggle  in  it- 
self, and  its  career  in  the  Arbitration  Court 
illustrates  nearly  every  phase  of  the  new  kind  of 
strike  New  Zealand  has  invented,  that  in  which 
justice  strikes  a  balance. 

The  story  of  the  relations  of  the  shoe  manu- 
facturers and  their  men,  before  the  Arbitration 
Court  was  established,  exhibits  both  masters 
and  men  in  the  trade  struggling  with  almost 
desperate  energy  to  establish  voluntary  concili- 
ation and  arbitration.       They  tried  by  every 


Compulsion  by  Minorities         35 

private  means  to  achieve  the  blessings  of  indus- 
trial peace,  by  conference,  reason  and  consent. 

They  failed  in  this  private  effort  because  of  the 
ugly  and  short-sighted  obduracy  of  a  few  manu- 
facturers. Then  the  new  court  was  opened  and 
we  see  the  stability  and  prosperity  which  pri- 
vate conciliation  could  not  give  them  introduced 
successfully  and  established  and  maintained 
by  compulsory  arbitration.  We  see  compulsory 
arbitration  doing  just  what  the  majority  of  the 
masters  and  the  men  tried  to  do,  but  could  not 
because  of  a  selfish  minority. 

Compulsion  thus  gives  not  only  peace,  but 
liberty — the  will  and  the  power  to  do  right — 
liberty  to  work,  liberty  to  contract  with  each 
other,  liberty  to  live  harmoniously,  liberty  to 
enjoy  the  fruits  of  honest  capital  and  honest 
industry. 

The  history  of  their  experience  previous  to 
the  creation  of  the  state  tribunal,  and  after- 
wards, has  been  published  by  the  trade-unions 
of  boot  makers  in  pamphlet  form  for  general 
distribution.  They  gave  it  this  publicity  be- 
cause they  realised  the  unique  interest  it  gained 
from  the  fact  that  they  had  been  the  first  to  take 
advantage  of  the  new  law,  and  because  they 
hoped  that  it  would  serve  as  a  guide  to  other 
unions  who  might  find  it  necessary  to  avail 
themselves  of  this  means  of  settling  disputes. 


36        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

The  boot  trade  of  New  Zealand  had  been  in 
continual  ferment  for  many  years,  up  to  1890, 
the  year  of  the  Maritime  Strike.  The  relations 
between  manufacturers  and  workingmen  had 
been  relations  of  constant  antagonism  and  dis- 
satisfaction. Suspicion,  ill-feeling  and  a  strong 
sense  of  injustice  had  been  engendered  on  both 
sides.  Some  solution  of  the  difficulty  came  at 
last  to  be  felt  by  all  as  a  necessity.  This  feeling 
was  intensified  by  the  shock  given  to  every  one 
by  seeing  the  country  go  to  the  verge  of  civil 
war  in  the  Maritime  Strike.  One  of  the  main 
causes  of  the  friction  and  of  the  strikes  which  it 
caused  had  been  the  demand  of  the  union  that 
only  unionists  should  be  employed,  and  their 
insisting  on  "the  custom  of  the  trade"  not  to 
work  with  non-unionists.  The  Boot  Makers 
Union  took  the  lead  in  opening  the  path  to  peace 
in  1 89 1.  They  pressed  the  manufacturers  to 
imitate  them  by  joining  together  in  association 
in  order  that  then  by  conference  they  might  find 
a  basis  for  working  with  mutual  concessions. 

The  outcome  of  this  invitation  from  the  boot 
makers  trade-union  to  the  manufacturers  of  the 
colony  was  an  acceptance  and  a  conference 
which  met  in  Wellington,  the  chief  city  of  the 
colony.  This  conference  resulted  in  agreement. 
The  employers  and  the  men  established  local 
and  central  Boards  of  Arbitration  and  Concili- 


Their  Voice  for  War  37 

ation  on  which  members  of  both  sides  should  be 
equally  represented.  They  thus  initiated  the 
same  procedure  which  the  arbitration  law  after- 
wards adopted. 

"When  the  meeting  finally  closed  both  mas- 
ters and  men  expressed  their  complete  satisfac- 
tion with  each  other,"  says  the  history  published 
by  the  trade-union,  and  "their  trust  that  a  new 
era  had  dawned  and  that  hereafter  the  relations 
might  be  of  a  kindly  character,  the  old  differ- 
ences healed  by  peace  and  goodwill  from  one  to 
the  other." 

But  to  the  surprise  and  dismay  of  their  repre- 
sentatives— as  well  of  the  employers  as  of  the 
men — after  they  had  thus  succeeded  in  harmo- 
nising their  differences  and  providing  means  of 
arbitrating  future  differences,  they  were  in- 
formed that  a  few  manufacturers  of  one  city — 
Auckland — a  very  small  minority  of  the  whole 
trade,  would  not  accept  the  action  of  the  con- 
ference and  would  not  abide  by  the  results.  The 
delegates  of  these  manufacturers  in  the  confer- 
ence made  no  secret  of  the  fact  that  they  were 
personally  desirous  that  their  principals,  the 
Auckland  employers  should  join  with  the  others, 
but  these  obstinately  refused  to  do  so,  and  the 
peremptory  word  was  sent  from  Auckland  that 
the  employers  there  refused  to  be  bound  by  any 
decision  arrived  at.     The  Auckland  manufac- 


38        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

turers  were  not  themselves  a  unit  in  this  action, 
but,  of  course,  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  a  few 
was  enough  to  shatter  all  that  had  been  done. 

What  was  known  as  the  Auckland  Strike,  a 
very  ugly,  obstinate  and  expensive  struggle, 
followed,  and  lasted  about  six  months.  During 
the  progress  of  this  strike,  the  representatives  of 
the  manufacturers  of  all  the  principal  cities,  in- 
cluding some  in  Auckland,  united  with  represen- 
tatives of  all  the  trade-unions  in  the  shoe  indus- 
try in  New  Zealand,  to  issue  a  manifesto  to 
the  public.  This  explained  the  pains  that  had 
been  taken  by  the  majority  of  the  manufac- 
turers and  all  the  unions  to  secure  harmony,  and 
the  adoption  of  a  rational  method  of  concili- 
ation, and  how  this  had  been  defeated  by  the 
contumacy  of  an  intractable  minority  of  guerilla 
competitors. 

"The  late  conference,"  they  said,  "brought 
about  the  establishment  of  good  feeling  between 
workingmen  and  manufacturers.  The  former 
were  satisfied  with  the  action  of  the  latter,  and 
they,  in  return,  acknowledged  the  fair  spirit  in 
which  the  men  considered  every  subject  submit- 
ted for  consideration.  Courts  of  Arbitration  and 
Conciliation  were  provided  for,  strikes  almost 
considered  an  impossibility,  while  the  future  re- 
lations of  the  employer  and  employed  presented 
a  brighter  aspect  than  has  ever  before  existed." 


A  Losing  Victory  39 

"That  a  few  manufacturers,"  these  manufac- 
turers and  unionists  concluded,  "shall  be  able  to 
gain  a  victory  in  a  fight  against  reasonableness 
and  fair  play,  we  refuse  to  believe.  Bad  will  it 
be  for  all,  themselves  included,  if  they  do  suc- 
ceed, for  once  again  fighting,  dissatisfaction  and 
discord  will  be  introduced  in  the  relation  be- 
tween employers  and  employes,  and  the  last 
state  probably  will  become  worse  than  the  first." 

But  "the  few"  manufacturers  did  win.  Their 
victory,  however,  was  as  predicted  dearly  won. 
As  a  result  of  the  defeat  of  the  men  and  the 
breakup  of  the  workers'  union,  and  the  filling  of 
the  factories  by  the  manufacturers  with  non- 
union and  boy  labour,  the  employers,  the  la- 
bourers and  the  community  suffered  losses 
easily  pointed  out.  Many  small  factories 
were  started,  and  in  a  short  time  the  com- 
petition became  so  keen  that  a  number  of 
manufacturers  decided  that  it  was  not  worth 
while  to  continue  in  business.  The  public  suf- 
fered because  the  cost  of  production  became 
greater  than  it  would  have  been  if  the  big  manu- 
factories had  been  going,  and  the  class  of  work 
done  became  inferior.  The  boys  who  were  put 
in  place  of  men  did  not  learn  their  trade  thor- 
oughly, and,  when  their  apprenticeship  was 
finished,  had  to  accept  work  at  a  less  rate  than 
journeymen,  and  the  men,  of  course,  suff^f^igi* 


40        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

for  those  who  continued  to  work  had  to  put  up 
with  an  uncertain  employment  and  fluctuating 
wages. 

These  evils  led  to  another  conference  after 
the  strike,  and  an  agreement  was  reached  in 
1892,  which,  like  the  one  before  it,  provided  for 
a  general  Board  of  Conciliation  and  Arbitration 
for  the  trade.  This  agreement  kept  peace  for 
three  years,  until  near  the  end  of  1895,  and  suc- 
cessfully arbitrated  several  serious  disputes. 

At  its  expiration  an  attempt  was  made  to 
form  another,  but  some  of  the  manufacturers 
refused  to  come  to  terms.  They  followed  up 
this  refusal  to  renew  the  old  agreement  by  pro- 
mulgating a  new  and  harsh  schedule  of  wages, 
rules  and  conditions,  changing  the  men's  posi- 
tion seriously  for  the  worse.  The  men  refused 
to  accept  these  new  terms. 

The  situation  then  was  this,  said  one  of  the 
labour  men  who  had  a  vigorous  vocabulary, 
"Should  the  vast  majority  of  the  manufacturers 
and  the  employes  and  the  general  public  who 
wanted  arbitration  and  peace,  stability  and  pros- 
perity, lose  them  to  enable  a  few  cranks  or 
crooks  of  competition  to  get  the  start  of  hu- 
maner  men?  The  right  of  'free  contract,' 
'managing  my  own  business,'  'liberty,'  for 
which  this  minority  held  out  against  the  rest  of 
the  trade  and  the  community,  was  nothing  more 


Using  their  Democracy  41 

nor  less  than  a  right  to  sneak,  cheat,  cut  and 
steal  away  their  neighbour's  business  and  prop- 
erty by  cruel  employment  and  cruel  competition. 
The  bulk  of  the  trade  could  gain  no  advantage 
from  letting  these  men  have  their  own  way,  for 
many  of  them  would  be  driven  out  of  business 
by  the  cuts  in  prices  which  cuts  in  wages 
would  make  possible.  The  supreme  law  in  New 
Zealand',  as  everywhere  else,  is  the  general  wel- 
fare. There,  as  elsewhere,  a  part  is  not  to  be 
allowed  to  make  itself  greater  than  the  whole." 

This  crisis  in  the  shoe  trade  came  just  at  the 
moment  when  public  opinion  in  New  Zealand, 
worn  out  with  the  evils  of  strikes,  had  resolved 
to  find  a  substitute.  The  people  were  sick  of 
battle-field  arbitration,  and  wanted  court-room 
arbitration,  and  what  they  wanted  they  gave 
themselves,  like  good  democrats. 

The  answer  of  New  Zealand  to  intractable 
minorities,  either  of  trade-unions  or  employers, 
who  wanted  to  fight  when  everybody  else 
wanted  peace,  was  that  arbitration  was  the  only 
ethical  and  economical  way  to  settle  otherwise 
irreconcilable  disputes.  The  overwhelming  ma- 
jority of  the  whole  people  wanted  it,  the  public 
welfare  and  public  morality  agreed  in  demand- 
ing it,  and  therefore  "You  must  arbitrate." 

When  the  ethical  convictions  and  the  eco- 
nomic interests  of  a  vast  preponderance  of  the 


42        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

community  unite  as  to  the  need  of  a  change, 
tliat  change  will  surely  come.  No  Anglo-Saxon 
•I'.ommunity  that  has  reached  this  state  of  mind 
has  ever  yet  hesitated  to  pass  any  "compulsory 
law"  necessary  to  enforce  the  demands  of  public 
opinion. 

The  compulsion,  let  it  never  be  forgotten,  was 
not  that  employers  or  workingmen  must  do 
business  at  "prices  fixed  by  law  and  force."  The 
compulsion  was  that  they  must  settle  these 
prices  by  arbitration  instead  of  vendetta.  The 
compulsion  was  to  arbitrate.  The  arbitration 
being  by  an  outsider,  an  impartial  and  com- 
petent person,  would  decide  on  prices  that  would 
be  fair  to  all.  If  there  must  be  a  sacrifice,  it 
would  apportion  it  justly.  If  there  was  a  profit, 
it  would  see  that  all  got  their  share  of  it. 

Another  disastrous  strike  would  ordinarily 
have  followed  the  action  of  the  manufacturers 
when  the  agreement  of  1892  expired  in  1895. 
But  in  the  meantime  the  Compulsory  Arbitration 
law  had  come  into  effect,  and  the  men,  with  the 
encouragement  of  many  of  the  manufacturers, 
sick  and  weary  with  finding  themselves  back 
where  they  had  been,  after  seven  years  of  hard 
work  to  make  strikes  impossible,  resolved  to  see 
if  the  new  machinery  of  the  state  could  not  be 
used  to  put  an  end  to  this  chronic  war,  and  give 
them — what  they  had  failed  to  get  by  private 
effort — lasting  peace. 


No  Lawyers  43 

Under  the  act  the  men  could  have  called  the 
manufacturers  before  the  court  whether  they 
wanted  to  come  or  not.  But,  perhaps,  because 
they  thought  a  conciliatory  tone  was  more  be- 
coming in  appealing  to  a  Board  of  Conciliation, 
they  wrote  their  employers  asking  them  if  they 
would  meet  them  before  the  board.  The  manu- 
facturers assented. 

The  men  were  also  entitled,  under  the  act,  to 
a  continuance  of  the  then  rates  of  wages  and 
other  conditions,  without  change  during  the  ar- 
bitration. But  here  again,  they  preferred  to 
seem  to  receive  as  a  favour  that  which  they 
would  have  had  now  as  a  right.  They  asked  the 
manufacturers  if,  pending  the  arbitration,  the 
old  rules  and  rates  would  remain  in  force.  To 
this  the  manufacturers  also  assented  cordially, 
as  they  could  easily  do,  since  they  would  have 
had  no  right  to  refuse. 

The  men  asked  for  the  privilege  of  having 
counsel,  but  the  manufacturers  replied  that  they 
did  not  intend  to  be  so  represented,  and  there- 
fore must  deny  the  request. 

The  proceedings  before  the  Board  of  Concili- 
ation opened  with  an  amicable  compliment  from 
the  principal  representative  of  the  manufac- 
turers. 

"First  of  all,"  he  said,  "I  should  like  to  com- 
pliment the  employes  on  taking  the  course  they 
have,   and   not   going  out  on  a  strike,   which 


44        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

would  have  been  a  deplorable  thing  to  do.  I 
hope  we  shall  work  harmoniously  together  and 
do  the  thing  which  is  just  and  right." 

A  later  remark  by  one  of  the  manufacturers 
before  the  board  shows  how  tenaciously  they 
clung  to  what  has  always  been  the  principal  con- 
tention of  the  manufacturers  in  these  disputes — 
their  right  to  ignore  the  organisation  and  the 
representatives  of  their  men. 

"I  must  say  at  once,"  said  this  representative 
of  the  Manufacturers'  Association,  "on  behalf 
of  the  manufacturers,  that  they  will  not  for  a 
moment  negotiate  with  outside  persons.  They 
will  not  deal  with  irresponsible  bodies,  or  with 
men  not  in  their  employ." 

But  this  brave  talk  did  not  prevent  their  com- 
plying with  the  order  of  the  court  when  it  was 
given,  that  they  should  deal  with  unions  of  their 
men,  whether  they  chose  to  designate  them  as 
"irresponsible  bodies"  or  not. 

The  award  of  the  Board  of  Conciliation  was 
accepted  by  the  manufacturers,  but  rejected  by 
the  men,  and  an  appeal  was  taken  to  the  Court 
of  Arbitration. 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  first  trade  to  try  the 
new  tribunal  was  one  in  which  a  voluntary  Con- 
ciliation Board  had  been  organised  by  both 
sides,  and  had  settled  satisfactorily  all  disputes 
referred  to  it,  and  had  lapsed  only  on  account  of 


A  Point  for  Employers  45 

the  refusal  of  a  few  among  the  employers  to 
renew  the  arrangement. 

If  the  men  were  right  in  the  point  they  made, 
quoted  above,  as  to  the  expensiveness  of  the 
manufacturers'  victory  to  themselves,  they 
were,  in  making  this  appeal  to  the  Arbitration 
Court,  fighting  the  cause  of  the  majority  and 
the  better  class  of  the  manufacturers  as  well  as 
their  own. 

That  an  Arbitration  Act  can  operate  as 
much  for  the  protection  of  employers  against 
guerilla  competitors  as  for  the  protection  of 
labour  against  capital,  is  one  of  the  great  dis- 
coveries being  made  by  experience  in  this  ex- 
periment. Manufacturers  in  New  Zealand  are 
beginning  to  see  this  and  take  advantage  of  it. 

I  learned  of  several  cases  in  which,  by  assist- 
ing their  employes  to  organise  and  appeal  to  the 
Court  of  Arbitration,  the  manufacturers  sought 
to  obtain  decisions  which  would  bind  not  merely 
themselves,  but  also  their  uncontrollable  com- 
petitors. Such  a  competitor  can  by  this  use  of 
the  Arbitration  Court  be  prevented  from  mak- 
ing the  cuts  in  wages  which  enable  him  to  cut 
prices  to  the  ruin  of  all  who  do  not  imitate  him 
in  squeezing  out  of  the  employes  the  funds  to 
fight  business  rivals. 

Like  the  strike  that  had  preceded  it,  this  con- 
test with  the  masters  before  the  Board  of  Con- 


46        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

ciliation  and  the  Arbitration  Court  lasted  six 
months,  from  May  until  November.  But  with 
what  a  difference.  One  had  stopped  the  fac- 
tories and  brought  misery  and  distress  to  thou- 
sands of  men,  women  and  children.  The  other 
took  only  a  dozen  men  from  their  counting- 
rooms  and  the  working-bench.  While  they 
debated,  the  industry  went  on,  wages  and  profits 
rolled  in  their  accustomed  channels  into  the 
hands  that  earned  them.  One  strike  in  this 
trade  had  cost  the  men  alone  thirty  thousand 
dollars,  and  had  created  the  angriest  feelings. 
But  the  arbitration  was  a  quiet,  almost  friendly 
debate,  and  the  participants,  speaking  in  public 
and  before  the  court,  had  to  control  their  tem- 
pers and  their  tongues. 

At  the  close  of  the  case,  his  Honour,  the  pre- 
siding Judge,  complimented  both  sides  on  "the 
thorough  and  clear  way  in  which  the  matter 
had  been  presented  and  the  good  feeling  which 
had  been  shown." 

He  requested  that  one  representative  of  each 
side  would  remain  in  attendance  to  instruct  the 
court,  if  any  techincal  points  should  arise  that 
needed  further  explanation.  The  Judge  said 
that  the  court  hoped  to  be  able  to  give  a  decision 
on  the  following  day,  but  it  was  a  fortnight  be- 
fore he  and  his  associates  were  ready  with  it. 

The  court  laid  down  a  rule  of  the  greatest 


Preference  for  Trade -Unionists     47 

interest,  which  has  since  been  followed.  The 
workingmen  had  asked  for  an  award  enforcing 
the  "custom  of  the  trade"  and  directing  the 
manufacturers  to  employ  only  trade-union  men. 
While  this  was  refused,  the  court  held  that 
members  of  the  union  should  be  given  employ- 
ment in  preference  to  non-members,  provided 
"there  are  members  of  the  union  who  are 
equally  qualified  with  non-members  to  perform 
the  particular  work  required  to  be  done,  and 
ready  and  willing  to  undertake  it." 

This  position  was  taken  by  the  court  because 
it  was  found  to  have  been  the  custom  of  the 
trade  to  employ  trade-union  men,  and  the  Court 
of  Arbitration  has,  throughout  its  career,  fol- 
lowed the  conservative  policy  of  making  its 
award  conform  as  closely  as  possible  to  what  is 
proved  to  be  the  practice. 

It  has,  for  example,  in  other  cases,  declined 
to  give  trade-unions  this  preference  where  it 
was  shown  that  they  had  not  previously  achieved 
any  such  preference  for  themselves. 

Another  reason  given  by  the  court  for  this 
preference  was  the  wording  of  the  title  of  the 
act.  This  then  stood  as  originally  passed,  "An 
act  to  encourage  the  formation  of  industrial 
unions  and  associations,  and  to  facilitate  the 
settlement  of  industrial  disputes  by  conciliation 
and  arbitration." 


48        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

The  court  held  that  the  title  must  be  consid- 
ered as  part  of  the  act  in  determining  the  inten- 
tion of  the  legislature. 

This  policy  of  giving  trade-unions  preference 
wherever  possible,  without  disturbing  the  set- 
tled practice  of  the  business,  has  since  been  fol- 
lowed by  the  court,  and  it  is  one  of  the  most 
important  rules  of  action  established  under  the 
arbitration  law  of  New  Zealand. 

While  giving  members  of  the  union  prece- 
dence in  employment  in  this  case,  the  court  re- 
quired that  non-union  and  trade-union  men  at 
work  side  by  side  should  work  harmoniously, 
under  the  same  conditions,  and  receive  equal 
pay  for  equal  work.  The  employer  was  ex- 
pressly conceded  "the  fullest  control  over  the 
management  of  his  factory,"  with  full  liberty 
*'to  introduce  machinery  without  notice,"  with 
no  restrictions  upon  out-put  or  the  method  of 
working. 

The  hours  were  limited  to  not  more  than  nine 
in  one  day,  nor  more  than  forty-eight  in  a  week. 
Extra  pay  for  overtime  was  given.  The  num- 
ber of  apprentices  to  be  employed  in  each  de- 
partment was  definitely  fixed.  Ten  dollars  a 
week  was  established  as  the  lowest  rate  to  be 
paid.     ''The  minimum  wage"  this  is  called. 

Superior  men  were  given  as  much  more  as 
they  could  earn.  The  rates  of  piece-work  were 
fixed  in  proportion. 


The  Minimum  Wage  49 

The  court  dealt  with  the  question  of  the  pay 
of  inferior  men  as  well  as  of  the  average  work- 
men. There  would,  of  course,  be  men  who 
could  not  earn  even  the  minimum,  but  whose 
services  would  still  be  needed  by  their  employ- 
ers. These  could  be  given  work,  but  their 
wages  were  to  be  determined,  if  any  question 
arose,  by  the  Board  of  Conciliation. 

To  prevent  sweating,  it  was  required  that  all 
work  should  be  done  in  the  shops. 

The  trade  custom  of  Boards  of  Conciliation 
and  Arbitration  within  the  trade  itself,  for 
which  the  better  class  of  manufacturers  and  the 
workingmen  had  so  bravely  contended,  was  re- 
stored, and  a  full  and  exact  constitution  for 
these  boards  was  laid  down,  and  they  were 
given,  within  the  trade,  the  powers  of  fixing 
prices,  determining  conditions  and  settling  dis- 
putes, which  the  Court  of  Arbitration  itself  pos- 
sesses for  all  industries.  This  power  to  create 
trade  tribunals  of  conciliation  and  arbitration  is 
one  of  the  most  important  functions  of  the  New 
Zealand  Court  of  Arbitration. 

This  settlement  was  achieved  with  average 
justice  to  all  concerned  because,  for  one  reason, 
the  parties  to  the  dispute  had  had  to  make  public 
all  the  conditions  of  their  industry,  and  to  have 
them  attested  by  witnesses  and  experts,  handled 
in  the  ways  usual  in  courts. 

This  ability  of  each  side  in  the  Arbitration 


50        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

Court  to  subject  the  claims  made  by  the  other 
to  the  fullest  examination  was  in  striking  con- 
trast to  their  helplessness  previously. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  pages  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  boot  trade  dispute  published  by  the 
trade-union,  is  that  in  which  it  recites,  and  an- 
swers as  it  can,  the  assertions  made  by  the  Auck- 
land manufacturers  who  refused  in  1891  to  be 
bound  by  the  results  of  the  conference.  These 
assertions  when  made  had  been  met  in  the  mani- 
festo of  the  employers  and  the  workingmen 
simply  by  counter-assertions,  for  this  was  the 
best  that  they  could  do  in  the  days  when  there 
was  not  yet  compulsory  publicity. 

The  Auckland  manufacturers,  for  instance, 
had  asserted  that  living  was  cheaper  in  their 
town  than  elsewhere,  and  that  the  men  were 
equally  well  off  with  smaller  wages  than  else- 
where. To  this  the  manifesto  had  to  content 
itself  with  replying:  "No  proof  has  been  given, 
and  probably  the  difference,  if  any,  is  infinitesi- 
mal." But  when  statements  like  this  were 
made  before  the  Court  of  Arbitration  proof  had 
to  be  brought.  The  Auckland  manufacturers 
had  to  back  up  their  assertions  with  actual  facts 
and  figures  subject  to  all  the  sifting  and  testing 
processes  of  court  procedure. 

Another  claim  which  the  Auckland  men  had 
made    was    that    they   bought    their    materials 


Compulsory  Truth  51 

cheaper,  and  hence  charged  less  for  their  goods, 
and  another,  that  the  wages  their  men  earned  at 
present  were  large  enough.  To  all  these  state- 
ments their  opponents  could  make  no  adequate 
reply  when  there  was  no  Arbitration  Court  or 
Conciliation  Board;  but  when  these  were  once 
in  operation,  no  assertion  of  that  sort  could 
avail  the  manufacturers  who  made  it  unless  they 
were  prepared  to  substantiate  it  with  indisput- 
able evidence,  which  could  stand  cross-examin- 
ation and  pass  muster  with  experts  and  judges 
trained  to  deal  with  all  kinds  of  myitification, 
statistical  and  otherwise. 

Statements  like  these  were  made  before  the 
Arbitration  Court,  but  now  they  were  investi- 
gated by  the  representatives  of  labour  and  capi- 
tal. All  the  necessary  books  had  to  be  pro- 
duced, experts  were  called  in,  and  questions  of 
fact  were  all  disposed  of  in  a  way  which  made  it 
impossible  to  doubt  that  the  truth  had  been 
ascertained. 

The  court  had  the  power  to  make  its  decision 
binding  on  the  trade  for  two  years,  but  it 
thought  it  was  wiser,  as  it  was  the  first  decision, 
to  let  it  run  for  only  one  year. 

At  the  end  of  the  year,  the  dispute  broke  out 
afresh.  The  two  associations  of  masters  and 
men  had  a  meeting  and  agreed  that  it  was  of  no 
use  to  go  before  the  Board  of  Conciliation,  for 


52        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

neither  side  would  rest  until  it  had,  first,  ex- 
hausted its  last  chance  of  getting  what  it  wanted 
by  going  to  the  court  of  last  resort,  and  second, 
had  got  a  decision  which  it  knew  it  had  to  obey, 
whether  it  wanted  to  or  not. 

In  other  words,  both  sides  wanted  compul- 
sion, not  conciliation ! 

The  employers,  as  the  remark  quoted  by  one 
of  their  number  at  the  beginning  of  the  concili- 
ation had  foreshadowed,  made  their  principal 
stand  against  that  part  of  the  decision  which 
gave  preference  to  trade-unions.  There  were 
other  points  at  issue,  but  the  main  fight  was  on 
this. 

The  men  wanted  forty- four  hours  a  week; 
the  manufacturers  were  willing  to  continue 
forty-eight  hours  a  week,  and  the  court  held 
with  them. 

The  manufacturers  agreed  to  the  average 
wage  of  ten  dollars  a  week.  The  workingmen 
were  denied  some  increases  of  pay  they  asked 
for  instructors'  apprentices  and  for  skilled  men 
to  put  at  work  on  machines,  but  they  were  given 
increased  rates  for  piece-work.  Some  of  their 
demands  as  to  the  limitation  of  the  number  of 
apprentices  were  conceded,  others  refused. 

The  employers  made  no  opposition  to  the 
provision,  designed  to  put  an  end  to  sweating, 
that  all  work  should  be  done  in  the  factory. 


The  Sore  Point  53 

Both  sides  agreed  that  new  machinery  could 
be  introduced  at  will  by  the  employer. 

The  sore  point  with  the  manufacturers  was 
that  they  were  forbidden  to  employ  non-union 
men  until  they  had  given  places  to  all  the  union 
men  who  were  competent  and  willing  to  do  the 
work.  This  was  threshed  out  again  as  it  had 
been  at  the  first  hearing.  The  manufacturers 
were  resolved  that,  as  they  had  said,  they  would 
not  deal  with  "irresponsible  bodies,"  nor  nego- 
tiate with  "outside  persons,"  meaning  delegates 
of  the  trade-unions. 

The  Boot  Makers  demanded  that — 

"Employers  shall  employ  members  of  the  New 
Zealand  Federated  Boot  Makers  Union  in  pre- 
ference to  non-members,  provided  there  are 
members  of  the  union  who  are  equally  qualified 
with  non-members  to  perform  the  particular 
work  required  to  be  done,  and  are  ready  and 
willing  to  undertake  it," 

The  Employers,  that — 

"Employers  shall  not  discriminate  between 
members  of  the  New  Zealand  Boot  Trade 
Union  and  non-members." 

The  court  made  its  decision  in  the  exact  lan- 
guage of  the  employes.     This  time  it  made  its 


54       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

award  binding  for  two  years,  the  full  limit  al- 
lowed, until  September  i,  1900. 

For  six  years  then,  from  September,  1895, 
until  September,  1900,  the  manufacturers  and 
the  men  in  the  boot  trade  will  have  been  en- 
abled, notwithstanding  many  serious  differ- 
ences, many  of  them  still  existing,  to  go  on 
working.  For  six  years  they  will  have  had  no 
strikes,  no  lockouts ;  there  will  have  been  no  un- 
expected demands  by  the  men,  no  sudden  cuts 
by  the  masters.  These  six  years  have  been 
years  of  constant  dispute,  but  there  has  not  been 
one  day's  idleness,  not  one  day  of  passion,  not 
one  blow  struck.  Both  sides  are  still  contend- 
ing, but  they  continue  at  work  and  are  pros- 
perous. 

When  the  two  years'  period  expires  in  1900, 
the  same  peaceful  means  of  settlement  will  be  at 
the  disposal  of  both  sides,  and  both  will  no 
doubt,  as  they  have  already  done,  decline  con- 
ciliation and  choose  compulsory  arbitration  be- 
cause it  is  compulsory,  and  guarantees  finality 
and  certainty  and  equal  conditions  for  all. 

Very  likely,  however,  by  that  time  the  two 
parties  in  this  trade  will  do  as  others  have  done 
under  the  new  regime,  they  will  agree  to  go  on 
according  to  the  terms  fixed  by  the  court  with- 
out troubling  it  again.  Or,  they  may  follow 
still  a  different  course,  as  has  also  occurred  in 


The  Better  Way  ^^ 

another  trade.  They  may  ask  the  president  of 
the  court  to  meet  with  them  informahy,  and, 
after  an  amicable  conversation,  make  a  volun- 
tary agreement  along  the  lines  suggested  by 
him. 

Is  not  this  a  civilised  way  for  civilised  people 
to  settle  their  differences?  If  there  is  a  better, 
where  is  it  to  be  found  ?  In  such  wholesale  dis- 
aster as  that  of  the  strike  in  the  quarries  of  Lord 
Penrhyn,  or  at  Homestead,  or  in  the  complete 
paralysis  that  for  months  last  year  held  almost 
all  the  industries  of  Denmark  in  its  grasp? 

The  representatives  of  the  boot  manufactur- 
ers' associations  pleaded  almost  piteously  before 
the  court  that  they  would  be  ruined  if  it  granted 
the  demands  of  the  men.  The  court,  these  rep- 
resentatives pleaded,  could  bind  their  associa- 
tion, but  "it  had  no  power  to  bind  outside  boot 
factories,  and  this  would  give  those  outside  the 
association  unfair  advantages,  as  they  would  be 
quite  unrestricted  as  to  wages  and  conditions 
under  which  they,  as  employers,  should  work. 
This  would  cripple  the  others  who  belonged  to 
the  association." 

The  court  dignifiedly  allowed  this  limiting 
-construction  of  its  powers  to  pass  uncorrected. 
But  an  opportunity  soon  came  to  show  whether 
it  had  power  to  bind  outside  manufacturers,  and 
would  have  the  courage  to  use  it. 


56        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

There  were  three  men  not  in  the  manufac- 
turers' association,  employers  of  non-union  men, 
and  they  disregarded  the  award  which  had  been 
made  against  those  inside  the  association.  The 
workingmen  of  the  union  at  once  summoned 
them  before  the  court.  They  were  able  to  do 
this  because  the  act  is  purposely  so  framed  that 
workmen  can  proceed  as  well  against  individual 
employers  as  against  associations  of  them.  The 
court  decided  that  these  manufacturers  must 
adhere  to  the  same  wages  and  other  conditions 
as  those  which  it  had  fixed  for  members  of  the 
manufacturers'  association.  But — and  this  is  an 
illustration  of  the  practical  and  conservative 
temper  in  which  the  judges  have  always  admin- 
istered the  act — the  requirement  that  trade-union 
men  must  be  given  preference  was  waived. 

Throughout  its  decisions,  the  court  has 
shown  that  its  aim  was  to  preserve  as  nearly  as 
possible  the  conditions  in  which  it  found  the 
trade.  It  has  constantly  endeavoured  to  avoid 
becoming  a  disturbing  element  in  business,  or 
a  legislator  of  new  conditions. 

Preference  in  this  case  was  waived  for  the 
reason  that  these  outside  manufacturers  repre- 
sented a  branch  of  the  industry  in  which  the 
men  were  as  yet  hardly  organised.  The  court 
therefore  only  stipulated  that  there  should  be  no 
discrimination  against  the  trade-unionists,  and 


No  Free  Lances  ^y 

required  the  outside  manufacturers  to  keep  all 
the  other  conditions  imposed  upon  their  com- 
petitors. 

When  the  first  award  against  the  boot  manu- 
facturers' association  expired,  in  December, 
1897,  these  outsiders  were,  of  course,  also  re- 
leased, and  they  at  once  resumed  their  former 
attitude  of  free  lances.  The  decision  already 
described  regulating  the  trade  until  September, 
1900,  was,  as  the  previous  one  had  been,  also 
disregarded  by  these  outsiders. 

Again  the  trade-union  called  them  before  the 
court,  and  this  time  they  were  sharply  handled 
there.  The  trade  had  by  this  time  got  into  a 
condition  which,  in  the  opinion  of  the  judges, 
made  the  preference  to  trade-unionists  advis- 
able, and  they  did  not  repeat  their  former  in- 
dulgence of  waiving  it  in  behalf  of  these 
manufacturers  who  did  not  wish  to  join  the 
manufacturers'  association,  or  to  carry  on  their 
business  by  the  same  methods  their  competitors 
were  compelled  to  observe. 

The  presiding  judge  said  that  the  conditions 
of  the  boot  trade  had  been  exhaustively  dealt 
with  by  the  court,  and  it  had  rendered  decisions 
which  it  had  meant  should  settle  matters  for 
the  whole  colony.  Employers  who  sought  to 
carry  on  their  business  on  conditions  other  than 
those  governing  the  trade  generally,  would  have 


58        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

to  show  good  cause  why  they  should  be  allowed 
to  do  so. 

The  court  then  called  upon  these  would-be 
free  lances  to  show  why  they  should  not  be 
bound  by  the  award.  It  did  not  trouble  the 
trade-union  to  make  any  statement  on  its  side. 
The  defendants  pleaded  that  they  had  "consci- 
entious scruples  about  belonging  to  the  masters' 
association,"  and  they  also  said  they  had  a  per- 
fect right  to  employ  workingmen  who,  like 
themselves,  had  scruples  about  joining  a  union. 

His  Honour  said  the  court  had  nothing  to  do 
with  such  scruples.  It  would  not  be  in  viola- 
tion of  "conscience"  for  them  to  abide  by  the 
rules  which  applied  to  their  competitors  in  the 
same  business. 

These  manufacturers  obstinately  contended 
that  they  were  not  bound  to  join  the  masters' 
association.  The  judge  said  that  there  was  no 
desire  to  force  them  to  do  so,  but  they  must 
come  under  the  same  conditions  as  their  com- 
petitors. All  the  employers  had  contended  be- 
fore the  court,  he  said,  that  they  should  have 
liberty  to  employ  whom  they  chose,  but  the 
court  had  decided  differently.  The  court  could, 
if  it  thought  it  wise,  vary  its  decision,  but,  if  it 
should  do  so  in  this  case,  it  would  be  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  these  three  firms  as  against  their 
competitors,  and  the  court  could  not  see  its  way 
to  give  them  any  such  advantage. 


Debate  Instead  of  War  59 

After  a  consultation  by  the  members  of  the 
court,  its  decision  was  announced  by  his 
Honour. 

It  would  be  grossly  unfair,  he  said,  to  their 
competitors,  if  these  men  were  exempted  from 
the  award,  and  the  court  could  see  no  reason  for 
exempting  them.  The  court  therefore  made  an 
award  binding  these  manufacturers  to  the  same 
terms  as  the  rest  of  the  trade. 

A  parting  shot  was  fired  by  one  of  the  de- 
fendants who  said  that  "whatever  it  cost  them, 
the  firm  would  not  sign  an  industrial  agree- 
ment; they  had  conscientious  scruples."  To 
which  the  court  blandly  replied  that,  whether 
they  had  conscientious  scruples  or  not,  or  signed 
or  not,  they  would  have  to  comply  with  the 
terms  of  the  decree. 

The  Mohammedans  have  a  saying  that  one 
hour  of  justice  is  worth  seventy  years  of  prayer, 
and  in  the  study  of  so  novel  and  important  a 
matter  as  compulsory  arbitration,  one  hour  of 
practical  experience  is  worth  seventy  years  of 
theory. 

In  this  instance,  we  see  the  first  case  which 
appears  before  the  court  continuing  to  appear 
before  it,  and  we  know  that  it  will  reappear. 
The  masters  and  the  men  are  both  strongly  or- 
ganised; they  hold  unshakable  convictions; 
they  even  have  "conscientious  scruples" ;  they 
are  not  satisfied,  for  neither  has  secured  what 


6o       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

he  asked  for,  but  they  find  it  less  intolerable 
to  obey  the  award  and  go  on  than  to  give 
lip  the  business.  The  trade  is  kept  in  continual 
agitation  for  six  years,  but  how  innocent  the 
agitation!  Instead  of  strikes,  riots,  starvation, 
bankruptcy,  passion,  and  all  the  other  accom- 
paniments of  the  Homestead  method,  there  has 
been — debate!  The  total  loss  is  a  few  weeks' 
time  of  only  a  dozen  men.  The  manufacturers 
have  not  been  ruined ;  they  have  not  had  to  shut 
down  their  works ;  they  have  not  fled  the  coun- 
try. The  workingmen  have  gone  on  working, 
buying  land  and  building  homes  and  paying  for 
them,  rearing  children,  and  building  up  industry 
and  the  state  as  well  as  their  homes. 


CHAPTER    III. 

"better  committees  than  mobs." 

One  of  the  great  sayings  of  Kant  was  that 
we  should  ''organise  the  world."  The  com- 
pulsory arbitration  of  New  Zealand  organises 
its  industrial  world.  Its  corner-stone  is  its  in- 
vitation to  labourers  and  capitalists  to  unite 
within  themselves  that  they  may  be  united  with 
each  other.  One  continually  sees  paragraphs 
like  this  in  the  newspapers  of  New  Zealand : 

"The  iron  workers  of  Auckland  have  unani- 
mously agreed  to  form  a  union  under  the  Con- 
ciliation and  Arbitration  Act,  to  be  called  The 
Federated  Iron  Workers  Union.  The  union 
■vVill  embrace  the  boiler-makers,  farriers  and 
general  smiths." 

And  often,  though  less  frequently,  one  sees 
similar  items  announcing  the  organisation  of 
the  employers.  At  the  last  accounts  there  had 
been  one  hundred  and  forty  trade-unions  and 
unions  of  employers  formed  to  take  advantage 
6i 


62        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

of  the  Compulsory  Arbitration  law.  More  are 
coming  into  line. 

Compulsory  arbitration  proceeds  on  the 
teaching  of  experience  that  in  labour  troubles  it 
is  better  to  have  committees  than  mobs  to  deal 
with,  even  mobs  of  one.  Of  all  mobs  there 
have  never  been  any  more  dangerous  than  an 
individual  beside  himself  with  passion  and 
greed,  defying  all  laws  of  God  and  man  that  he 
may  have  his  own  way. 

Everything  that  can  be  done  by  the  New  Zea- 
land law  to  encourage  these  organisations  is 
done.  Manufacturers  stay  outside  the  organi- 
sation of  their  associates  in  the  hope  of  escaping 
arbitration,  only  to  find  themselves  as  easily 
brought  before  the  bar  as  the  others.  Organi- 
sations of  workingmen  which  are  not  registered 
under  this  law  cannot  hold  land  for  their  collect- 
ive purposes  and  cannot  sue  defaulting  members. 
Of  course  they  cannot  vote  for  members  of  the 
Boards  of  Conciliation  and  Courts  of  Arbitra- 
tion, and  yet,  when  any  disturbance  arises  in 
their  trade,  they  find  themselves  brought  before 
these  boards  and  put  under  the  same  terms  of 
employment  as  their  fellows  who  have  regis- 
tered. These  are  powerful  inducements  for  or- 
ganisation and  registration  both  by  employers 
and  workingmen,  and  there  are  others. 

There  is  not  a  detail  of  any  grievance  a  work- 


Sure  of  a  Hearing  63 

ingman  may  have  which  cannot  be  brought  out 
before  the  arbitrators  and  the  public  if  he  is  a 
member  of  a  registered  trade-union.  For  work- 
ingmen  so  organised  there  is  no  more  "refusal 
to  receive  committees,"  no  more  insistence  upon 
"dealing  with  individuals,"  no  more  talk  from 
the  co-working  capitalists  to  them  of  "my  busi- 
ness." 

When  the  member  of  the  registered  trade- 
union  asks  to  be  given  some  of  the  profits,  there 
is  no  more  putting  him  off  with  sweeping  state- 
ments that,  "The  business  would  not  stand  any 
increase  in  wages ;"  statements  which  elsewhere 
have  to  be  accepted  because  there  are  no  means 
of  either  challenging  them  or  verifying  them. 

Loose  allegations  of  that  kind  are  not  safe 
before  the  Court  of  Arbitration,  for  it  can  com- 
pel the  production  of  books  and  papers  and  the 
attendance  of  witnesses  to  make  them  good. 
Public  opinion  in  a  dispute  where  a  registered 
union  of  labour  or  capital  is  concerned,  does  not 
have  to  get  its  information  from  one-sided 
newspaper  accounts  of  the  grievances  of  either 
employers  or  employes. 

From  the  first,  through  all  its  decisions,  the 
Arbitration  Court  has  given  trade-unionists, 
wherever  possible,  the  right  to  be  employed  until 
they  have  all  obtained  work,  before  it  permits 
the  employment  of  non-unionists.    Various  rea- 


64       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

sons  have  at  different  times  been  given  by  the 
court  to  sustain  this  poHcy.  Besides  the  rea- 
sons already  mentioned,  found  in  the  wording 
of  the  title  of  the  law  and  in  the  custom  of  the 
trade,  the  courts  have  held  that  "the  advantages 
which  were  procured  by  unions  for  their  mem- 
bers were  obtained  at  some  expense,  and  there- 
fore it  was  but  right,  provided  entrance  to  the 
union  was  not  prohibited,  that  preference  should 
be  given  to  unionists,  and  if  non-unionists 
would  not  pay  the  small  fee  and  contributions 
to  entitle  them  to  the  advantages,  they  had  no- 
thing to  complain  of." 

In  the  iron  moulders  case  the  court  expressed 
the  opinion  that  both  masters  and  men  benefited 
by  the  existence  of  the  unions;  that  it  was  bet- 
ter for  all  parties  to  deal  with  bodies  than  with 
individuals. 

It  is  a  curious  phenomenon  of  antipodal  pub- 
lic opinion  that  America  is  being  swept  by  waves 
of  opposition  on  one  side  of  society  to  trade- 
unions  and  of  opposition  on  the  other  side  to 
unions  of  capitalists,  while  in  New  Zealand  the 
people  and  the  government  favour  the  fullest  or- 
ganisation of  both. 

The  first  judge  of  the  Arbitration  Court, 
though  a  man  of  the  highest  character  and  un- 
questioned impartiality,  still  was  so  thoroughly 
identified  socially  with  those  who  are  not  ex- 


The  Tory  Judge  6^ 

pected  to  have  much  sympathy  with  the  working 
classes,  that  the  trade-unionists  felt  no  little  ap- 
prehension as  to  what  was  to  be  expected  of  his 
interpretation  of  the  law.  But  it  was  he  who 
initiated  this  policy  of  preference,  and  estab- 
lished it  so  firmly  that  it  has  never  been  de- 
parted from.  Though  he  was,  in  fact,  what 
some  called  a  "Tory"  judge,  and  was  feared 
correspondingly  by  workingmen,  he  decided 
nine  times  out  of  ten  in  favour  of  the  men ;  not, 
he  said,  because  they  were  workingmen,  but  be- 
cause they  had  the  right  of  the  case. 

But,  though  the  Court  of  Arbitration  gives  a 
preference  to  trade-unionists  when  it  thinks  that 
that  is  called  for,  it  does  not  hesitate  to  withhold 
it  when  the  circumstances  seem  to  make  that  the 
proper  course  to  pursue. 

In  a  dispute  between  a  number  of  gold  mining 
companies  whose  employes  were  not  well  or- 
ganised, the  court  only  directed  that  "each  of 
the  companies  shall  not  discriminate  against 
members  of  the  union,  and  shall  not,  either  di- 
rectly or  indirectly,  do  anything  with  a  view  to 
injuring  the  union." 

And  upon  trade-unionists  it  laid  the  injunc- 
tion, "Members  of  the  union  shall  work  in  har- 
mony with  non-union  men." 

In  another  case  where  the  Court  of  Arbitra- 
tion did  not  find  itself  called  upon  to  give  the 


66        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

preference  in  employment  to  trade-unionists,  it 
still  recommended  that  the  steamship  owners  be- 
fore the  court  should  allow  union  officials  to  go 
on  board  their  vessels  and  consult  with  seamen 
at  reasonable  times.  But  the  court  stated  that 
it  did  not  intend  that  its  recommendation 
should  have  the  force  of  law,  as  the  court  did 
not  consider  that  it  had  power  to  give  a  person 
liberty  to  enter  upon  a  steamship  or  other  prop- 
erty against  the  will  of  the  owner. 

In  another  case,  the  court  allowed  the  com- 
pany the  option  of  employing  non-union  men, 
but  specified  that  there  was  to  be  no  preference 
in  their  favour. 

In  a  case  before  the  Conciliation  Board  in- 
volving the  Bakers  Union  of  Dunedin,  the  chair- 
man of  the  board  said  that  the  ruling  of  the  Ar- 
bitration Court  was  understood  to  be  that, 
except  under  special  circumstances,  union  men 
shall  get  preference  of  employment.  This  shows 
it  to  be  the  practice  of  the  court  to  throw  the 
burden  upon  the  employer  of  bringing  forward 
evidence  to  prove  that  in  his  case  there  were 
"special  circumstances"  militating  against  such 
a  preference. 

The  act  and  its  administration  by  the  court  for- 
tifies the  position  of  trade-unionists  by  allowing 
them  to  bring  non-unionists  in  their  trade  before 
the  court.     They  can  summon  the  employers  of 


The  Benefit  to  Employers         67 

these  non-unionists,  and  by  putting  them  under 
the  same  conditions  as  other  employers  of  trade- 
unionists,  protect  themselves  from  being  under- 
cut by  their  unorganised  associates. 

Employers  cannot  escape  the  obligation  to 
employ  union  men  on  union  terms  by  discharg- 
ing their  union  hands  and  replacing  them  by 
non-unionists,  for  the  court  has  decided  that  in 
such  cases  it  still  has  jurisdiction. 

This  is  one  of  the  features  of  the  act  which 
has  won  the  most  favour  with  all  sides,  most  of 
all  with  employers,  for  it  prevents  them  from 
being  ruined  by  the  competitor  who  cuts  wages 
in  order  to  cut  prices. 

Though  giving  a  preference  to  unionists,  the 
court  is  careful  to  protect  non-unionists  who 
are  at  work.  Such  a  sentence  as  this  occurs 
frequently  in  the  decisions  of  the  court : 

"This  is  not  to  interfere  with  the  existing  en- 
gagements of  non-members,  whose  present  em- 
ployers may  retain  them  in  the  same  or  other 
positions." 

No  one  can  read  the  decisions  of  the  court  and 
detect  the  slightest  trace  of  anything  like  bias 
for  or  against  either  labour  or  capital. 

The  court  has  taken  some  severe  "falls"  out 
of  trade-unions  which  have  asked  for  preference 
of  employment  for  their  members. 

In  a  case  between  the  Wellington  Seamen's 


68        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

Union  and  the  shipowners,  the  judge  entirely 
refused  to  make  the  ruHng  which  was  asked  by 
the  seamen,  that  they  should  have  the  preference 
in  employment.  The  judge  pointed  out  that  the 
union  did  not  dispute  the  fact  that  the  ship- 
owners had  faithfully  abided  by  the  previous 
ruling  of  the  court  that  they  should  not  in  any 
way  interfere  with  union  men  as  such,  or  with 
the  unions.  That  in  itself,  he  said,  was  a  very 
strong  reason  why  matters  should  be  left  as  they 
were,  but  he  pointed  out  that  there  were  other 
reasons  to  be  taken  into  account. 

The  management  and  navigation  of  ships,  he 
said,  stand,  in  many  respects,  on  quite  a  dififer- 
ent  footing  from  the  management  of  factories 
or  other  ordinary  businesses.  Above  all  things, 
it  is  necessary  to  have  discipline  on  shipboard. 
Those  who  follow  a  seafaring  life  must,  to  a 
certain  extent,  recognise  that,  like  soldiers  and 
men-of-war's-men,  they  must  give  up  their 
rights  of  individual  action  for  the  public  benefit. 
Every  order  given  by  an  officer  must  be  unhesi- 
tatingly obeyed,  whether  reasonable  or  unrea- 
sonable, otherwise  the  lives  and  property  of  the 
public  would  be  in  danger. 

One  of  the  facts  in  this  case  which  had  been 
brought  out  was  that  the  company  before  the 
court  was  on  friendly  terms  with  the  seamen's 
union  of  another  city,  Dunedin,  and  to  compel  a 


Judges  and  Business  69 

shipowner  whose  vessel  plied  between  these  two 
ports  to  give  preference  to  the  Wellington  sea- 
men, the  court  pointed  out  might  cause  very  un- 
pleasant and  even  dangerous  complications. 

Had  a  strong  case  been  made  out,  he  said,  he 
might  have  had  to  try  to  get  over  it,  but  no  such 
case  has  been  made  out.  It  had  been  urged  that, 
if  this  union  did  not  secure  preference  for  its 
members,  some  of  them,  who  were  individually 
selfish,  might  leave  it,  thinking  they  were  not 
getting  the  value  for  their  money. 

But  the  court  held  that  that  was  no  reason 
whatever  for  giving  a  preference,  and  added  his 
hope  and  belief  that  members  of  the  union 
would  be  more  manly,  more  far-seeing  than  they 
had  been  described  to  be  in  the  presentation  of 
this  argument. 

This  award  gave  the  seamen  a  few  conces- 
sions and  fixed  the  conditions  of  employment 
for  both  sides  until  August,  1901. 

Another  case  in  which  a  trade-union  asking 
preference  was  handled  severely  by  the  court, 
was  that  of  the  engineers  of  Christchurch,  and 
it  is  worth  giving  in  some  detail,  as  it  brings 
into  clear  view  some  interesting  aspects  of  the 
operation  of  compulsory  arbitration,  and  illus- 
trates vividly  the  ability  of  judges,  "who  know 
nothing  of  business,"  to  see  the  practical  points 
of  a  complicated  matter. 


70       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

The  court  refused  the  engineers  of  Christ- 
church  preference  in  employment,  and  empha- 
sised its  refusal  by  the  unusual  course  of  adding 
to  its  award  a  special  memorandum,  giving  its 
reasons  at  great  length  to  the  trade  and  the 
public. 

It  almost  seems  as  if  the  court  desired  to 
make  it  conspicuous  that  it  had  no  leanings  to- 
ward the  side  of  labour,  though  it  was  so  fre- 
quently deciding  in  its  favour  against  capital. 

How  far  is  this  union,  the  court  asked,  "really 
representative  of  the  great  body  of  men  em- 
ployed in  the  trade  affected?" 

Its  analysis  of  the  figures  of  membership 
showed  that  "the  union  demand  is  the  demand 
of  seventeen  or  eighteen  men  out  of  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty-one,  to  enforce  their  views  upon 
the  w^hole  body." 

The  number  of  men  indirectly  concerned  was 
very  large,  not  less  than  one  thousand  six  hun- 
dred and  thirty,  according  to  the  government 
returns.  The  court  declared  that  because  it 
was  so  small  a  minority,  and  for  other  reasons 
which  it  gave,  it  was  compelled  to  the  con- 
clusion that  the  demand  of  the  union  was  in- 
imical to  the  interests  of  the  majority  of  the 
workingmen. 

Other  claims  made  by  the  union  were  handled 
with  equal  severity.     They  asked  that  the  hours 


Decisions  Against  the  Men        71 

be  limited  to  forty-four  a  week.  This  was  re- 
fused, as  there  was  no  evidence  that  such  a 
change  was  wanted  by  any  considerable  num- 
ber of  the  men. 

The  union  asked  that  the  maximum  rates  of 
wages  which  skilled  workingmen  were  earning 
be  made  "the  minimum  wage,"  or  the  wage  of 
the  average  worker.  The  effect  of  this  would 
be,  the  judge  said,  "to  throw  out  of  employment 
a  large  body  of  steady  and  deserving  men  who 
are  not  sufficiently  skilled  to  command  the 
highest  wage."     The  court  said : 

"It  was  not  disputed  on  the  part  of  the  union 
that,  if  the  advance  demanded  were  conceded, 
numbers  of  men  who  were  now  earning  a  decent 
livelihood  must  necessarily  quit  their  present 
employment,  and  the  only  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion as  to  what  was  to  become  of  such  men  was 
a  suggestion  that  they  should  go  'bushwhack- 
ing,' a  suggestion  which  appears  to  me  to  im- 
ply not  only  very  imperfect  knowledge  as  to 
what  was  involved  in  bushwhacking,  but  a  very 
imperfect  conception  of  the  rights  of  fellow- 
workmen." 

Another  reason  for  not  granting  these  and 
other  claims  was  that  the  employers  would  be 
forced  to  raise  the  prices  of  their  goods,  such  as 
agricultural  machinery,  and  this  they  could  not 
afford  to  do  for  "they  were  working  in  compe- 


72        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

tition  not  only  with  each  other,  but  with  other 
similar  establishments  in  other  centres  in  the 
colony,  and  not  only  with  these  but  also  in  com- 
petition with  importers.  The  concession  of 
these  demands  would  result  in  the  speedy  ex- 
tinction of  the  agricultural  implement  manufac- 
turing trade." 

The  Court  of  Arbitration  has  often  limited 
the  number  of  apprentices  at  the  request  of  the 
unions,  but  in  this  case  it  would  not  do  so. 

"The  main  grounds,"  the  court  said,  "urged 
in  support  of  this  claim  are,  first,  that  the  trade 
will  become  over-manned  unless  the  number  of 
apprentices  is  limited ;  and,  second,  that  the  ap- 
prentices are  not  so  well  taught  if  their  number 
exceed  those  suggested." 

But  in  reply  to  this  the  court  pointed  out  that, 
"up  to  the  present  time,  though  the  number  of 
apprentices  has  not  been  limited,  the  trade  has 
not  become  over-manned.  The  reason  is  that 
engineers  are  required  in  many  other  walks  of 
life  besides  engineer  shops,  such  as  marine  en- 
gineers, refrigerating  engineers,  both  at  sea  and 
on  shore,  etc.  Engineers  are  also  required  in 
all  large  factories  where  machinery  is  used. 
The  engineering  shops  are  necessarily  the  train- 
ing grounds  for  all  these  engineers,  and  the  re- 
sult has  been  that  all  the  lads  who  have  served 
their  apprenticeship  in  Christchurch  and  have 


Keeping  the  Door  Open  73 

learned  their  trade,  have  had  no  difficulty  in 
finding  employment." 

The  second  point,  that  apprentices  are  not 
well  taught,  if  there  is  a  large  number  of  them, 
the  court  found  to  fail  equally  with  the  other. 

"It  has  been  proved  beyond  a  doubt,"  it  said, 
"that  engineers  trained  in  Christchurch  shops 
have  been  able  to  hold  their  own  with  engi- 
neers trained  in  Great  Britain  and  elsewhere, 
and  that  many  of  them  have  done  remarkably 
well." 

"It  would  require  very  special  grounds,  in 
my  opinion,"  continued  the  judge,  "to  justify  an 
award  which  would  have  the  effect  of  closing 
the  door  to  an  employment  which  has  so  many 
outlets,  and  which  is  justly  popular  with  the 
youth  of  the  colony." 

He  then  went  on  to  point  out  a  special  ground 
why  a  claim  to  limit  the  number  of  engineering 
apprentices  should  be  more  closely  scrutinised  in 
Christchurch  than  elsewhere  in  the  colony. 

"There  is,  it  seems,  in  Christchurch  a  school 
of  engineering  attended  by  some  ninet}''  stu- 
dents, all  of  whom  require  to  have  a  practical 
knowledge  of  their  trade,  and  this  they  can  only 
acquire  in  the  engineering  shops  in  Christ- 
church. It  is  not  contested  that  this  school  does 
good  work,  and  that  it  is  a  highly  desirable  in- 
stitution, yet  the  result  of  conceding  the  union 


74       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

demand  in  the  matter  would  be  to  debar  many 
of  the  students  from  acquiring  the  practical 
knowledge  which  is  essential  to  them." 

In  the  truly  practical  spirit  of  our  Anglo- 
Saxon  law,  the  judge  took  special  pains  to  show 
that  in  this  ruling  he  was  considering  only  the 
actual  and  special  circumstances  of  the  case  be- 
fore him,  and  was  not  establishing  precedents 
which  could  be  indiscriminately  applied. 

"I  desire  to  guard  myself,"  he  said,  "from 
seeming  to  lay  down  any  rules  as  to  when  it 
may  be  proper  to  give  such  a  privilege  to  the 
members  of  the  union,  because  I  think  that  each 
case  must  stand  upon  its  own  merits,  and  the 
claim  must  in  every  case  be  carefully  scrutin- 
ised." 

The  Honourable  John  Rigg,  one  of  the  rep- 
resentatives of  labour  in  the  Upper  House  of  the 
New  Zealand  Parliament,  in  discussing  this 
decision,  said : 

"Those,  I  consider,  are  very  good  grounds 
for  the  decision,  and  we  see  here  the  absolute 
impartiality  with  which  the  disputes  have  been 
determined." 

This  decision  indicated  no  change  of  heart  in 
the  Court  of  Arbitration  and  no  apostasy  to  its 
principle,  as  to  the  importance  of  trade-unions 
nor  their  rights  to  a  preference  of  employment 
when  the  circumstances  called  for  it. 


Reinstating  the  Discharged        7_^ 

The  court  continued  after  this  decision  as  be- 
fore to  give  preference  to  trade-unions.  This 
was  awarded  in  fact  by  the  Board  of  ConciHa- 
tion  and  the  Court  of  Arbitration  to  all  the 
trade-unions  in  the  same  town  of  Christchurch, 
in  all  the  disputes  which  have  come  up  since,  and 
there  have  been  a  number  of  them — the  printers, 
bakers,  butchers,  cooks,  tinsmiths,  sheet-iron 
workers,  tailors,  grocers,  furniture  makers. 

How  far  the  court  was  from  any  bias  against 
trade-unionism  is  shown  in  the  case  of  a  coal- 
mining company  which  had  discharged  three 
men  because  they  were  members  of  an  industrial 
union — the  president,  the  secretary,  and  the  son 
of  the  secretary.  Their  union  called  the  com- 
pany to  account  and  the  case  was  heard  by  the 
Court  of  Arbitration.  The  court  awarded  that 
the  company  should  pay  by  way  of  damages  to 
the  union  $283,  which  was  the  wages  the  men 
had  lost,  and  should  also  pay  the  costs,  amount- 
ing to  $57. 

The  court  ordered  the  reinstatement  of  the 
men  discharged  for  their  unionism : 

"The  employers,  if  so  requested  by  any  of 
them  (the  discharged  men)  within  one  week 
from  the  making  of  this  award,  shall  take  them 
into  their  service  in  the  same  capacities  they 
occupied  at  the  time  of  their  dismissal." 

The  Arbitration  Court  has  gone  so  far  as  to 


76       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

recommend  men  who  were  not  organised  to 
form  unions. 

Some  range-makers  wanted  to  be  included  in 
an  award  in  a  dispute  affecting  some  tinsmiths 
and  sheet-metal  workers.  In  giving  his  de- 
cision, the  judge  said  that  the  court  had  come 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  range-makers  could 
not  come  under  the  award.  But  at  the  same 
time,  he  continued,  there  was  no  reason  why 
these  men  should  not  form  a  union  of  their 
own,  and  then,  if  they  had  a  grievance  they 
could  apply  to  the  court  to  fix  their  wages. 

Women  workers  were  intended  by  Mr. 
Reeves  and  Parliament  to  be  given  all  the  bene- 
fits of  the  act,  but  they  did  not  seem  to  consider 
themselves  covered  by  its  language.  The  act 
said  "workmen,"  and  the  new  spirit  of  inde- 
pendence which  marks  the  sex  in  our  century, 
apparently  prompted  them  to  ignore  the  act  be- 
cause it  did  not  specially  mention  them. 

To  meet  this  difficulty  it  was  necessary  to 
amend  the  bill  the  year  after  its  passage.  In 
offering  this  amendment,  the  Minister  of  La- 
bour, Mr.  Reeves,  said  that  it  had  been  found 
impossible  to  persuade  the  women  that  "work- 
men" included  work-women.  They  were  under 
the  impression  that  they  were  debarred  from 
registering  under  the  act  because  of  the  exclu- 
sive use  of  this  masculine  word.     He  therefore 


Coaxing  Women  to  Arbitrate     'j^ 

proposed  to  substitute  for  "workmen"  the  word 
"workers."  With  this  concession  to  the  dignity 
of  their  sex,  the  women  workers  have  since 
registered  freely,  and  have  obtained  important 
advantages,  but  especially  in  the  clothing  trade 
as  will  be  shown. 

"There  is  much  virtue,"  says  Shakespeare,  "in 
your  'if.'  "  There  is  much  virtue  in  New  Zea- 
land in  "workman."  This  word  is  legally  de- 
fined in  the  land  regulations  of  the  colony  as 
meaning  any  man  or  woman  over  twenty-one, 
"who  is  engaged  in  any  form  of  manual,  cleri- 
cal or  other  work  for  hire  or  reward,"  and  is  not 
worth  more  than  $750. 

This  word  is  a  straw  which  would  suggest 
at  once  to  any  one  knowing  the  New  Zealand 
character,  that  others  than  those  ordinarily 
known  as  artisans  or  manual  workers  would  be 
likely  to  claim  for  themselves  from  the  Arbitra- 
tion Law  the  benefits  of  what  it  gives. 

This  has  been  the  case. 

In  my  morning  paper  at  Christchurch,  I  read 
one  day : 

"The  employes  in  the  grocery  trade  have  re- 
cently formed  an  industrial  union,  and  during 
the  past  fortnight  have  submitted  certain  con- 
ditions to  the  employers.  As,  however,  the 
great  body  of  them  simply  ignore  the  requests 
of  the  union,  some  forty  employers  have  been 


yS       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

incited  to  appear  before  the  Board  of  Concilia- 
tion of  Thursday  next,  at  2  p.  m." 

All  classes  of  employes  in  the  groceries  had 
joined  in  the  organisation — clerks,  bookkeepers, 
order  collectors,  head  draymen  and  other  dray- 
men. 

The  decision  of  the  Conciliation  Board  was  in 
favour  of  the  men  on  almost  all  points.  The 
board  recommended  that  the  minimum  or  aver- 
age wage  for  these  men  should  be  £2  5s. 
($11.25)  ^  week.  It  provided  that  those  who 
were  unable  to  earn  the  minimum  could  be  still 
employed  at  lesser  wages  to  be  approved,  if 
necessary,  by  the  Conciliation  Board. 

The  award  provided  for  extra  pay  for  over- 
time at  the  rate  of  one  shilling  (twenty-five 
cents)  an  hour,  and  all  time  worked  on  holidays 
was  to  be  classed  as  overtime. 

The  award  also  gave  the  members  of  the  Can- 
terbury Grocers'  Union  ''preference  of  employ- 
ment over  non-members,"  with  the  usual 
stipulation,  "provided  that  the  members  of  the 
union  are  equally  qualified  with  non-members 
to  perform  the  particular  work  required  to  be 
done,  and  are  ready  and  willing  to  undertake  it." 

The  employers  were  required  to  give  the  sec- 
retary of  the  union  twenty-four  hours'  notice 
when  they  wanted  additional  clerks  before  they 
were  allowed  to  engage  any  non-union  men. 


Clerks  Ruled  Out  79 

But  the  representative  of  the  employers  when 
this  award  was  made  announced  that  the  gro- 
cers would  not  accept  it,  and  would  compel  their 
men  to  appeal  to  the  Arbitration  Court.  There 
the  point  would  be  pressed  by  the  employers 
that  the  grocery  trade  was  not  an  "industry," 
and  the  clerks'  union  could  not  therefore  be 
registered  under  the  Arbitration  Act.  In  this 
position  the  employers  claimed  they  were  for- 
tified by  the  best  legal  advice  obtainable. 

They  had  made  this  point  before  the  Board  of 
Conciliation,  but  the  board  was  unanimous  in 
its  opinion  that  the  clerks  were  properly  before 
the  court,  and  that  the  case  must  proceed.  If 
the  action  of  the  Board  of  Conciliation  had  been 
sustained  by  the  appeal,  and  the  objections  of 
the  employers  overruled,  other  clerks  and  em- 
ployes of  mercantile  houses,  and  even  of  finan- 
cial concerns,  would  have  organised  and  claimed 
the  protection  of  the  act,  for  their  wages  and 
terms  of  employment.  The  Arbitration  Court, 
however,  reversed  the  decision  of  the  Board  of 
Conciliation,  and  held  that  an  issue  between  the 
grocers  and  their  assistants  was  not  an  "indus- 
trial dispute"  within  the  meaning  of  the  act. 
But  it  suggested  that  the  union  could  ask  the 
Supreme  Court  for  a  mandamus  to  the  Arbitra- 
tion Court  to  hear  the  case. 

One  of  the  leading  papers  of  Christchurch 


8o        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

in  discussing  this  case  said  that,  if  the  Arbitra- 
tion Court  did  not  sustain  the  right  of  the 
grocery  clerks  to  take  advantage  of  the  act,  the 
legislature  would  certainly  amend  it  in  their 
favour.  In  one  way  or  the  other,  either  by  an 
interpretation  by  the  Court  of  Arbitration  which 
will  admit  clerks,  etc.,  or  by  amendment  of  the 
law,  we  may  look  to  see  drug  clerks,  grocery 
employes,  in  fact,  all  employes,  including,  very 
likely,  domestic  workers  in  the  family  and  farm 
labourers,  invited  to  enlist  in  the  army  of  non- 
combatants.  They  are  all  workmen  in  the  sense 
which  has  been  given  that  word  officially  by  the 
New  Zealand  government  in  its  land  legislation. 

Public  policy  will  see  the  same  reasons  for 
this  universal  inclusion  of  all  men  and  women 
who  receive  hire  as  for  the  inclusion  of  one 
class.  The  Compulsory  Arbitration  law  will 
then  become  a  truly  democratic  measure,  giving 
its  helping  hand  to  all. 

It  took  a  year  for  the  grocers'  assistants  to 
get  their  case  decided.  This  delay  reveals  one 
of  the  practical  defects  of  the  operation  of  the 
law.  The  President  of  the  Arbitration  Court 
having  other  courts  to  sit  in  is  slow  in  getting 
around  the  colony,  and  there  was  consequently 
for  many  months  no  session  of  the  court  in 
Christchurch.  The  awards  of  the  Conciliation 
Board  not  being  enforceable,  its  award  in  their 


The  Defect  in  Procedure  8i 

favour  had  for  that  length  of  time  been  of  no 
practical  value  to  the  clerks.  The  government 
has  promised  to  remedy  this  difificulty  by  in- 
creasing the  judicial  force  of  the  Arbitration 
Court. 

By  its  advance  to  include  women  as  well  as 
men,  we  see  the  New  Zealand  Arbitration  Law 
grounding  itself  more  firmly,  step  by  step,  in 
the  life  of  the  people,  aggrandising  itself  as  a 
good  institution  will  do,  constantly  gaining  a 
larger  place  and  binding  the  citizens  to  itself 
more  and  more.  During  these  six  years  of  ex- 
istence it  has  grown  every  day  more  important. 

There  is  no  right  without  its  duty.  With 
this  preference  of  employment  which  it  gives 
trade-unionists,  the  Court  of  Arbitration  lays 
upon  them  corresponding  obligations.  A  para- 
graph in  the  decision  in  favour  of  preference  for 
employment  for  the  painters  of  Christchurch 
shows  this. 

"The  union,"  the  court  says,  "is  to  keep  in  a 
convenient  place,  within  one  mile  from  the  chief 
post-office  in  Christchurch,  a  book  of  trade- 
unionists  out  of  employment,  together  with  their 
qualifications — a  note  to  be  made  when  any  of 
the  workmen  obtain  employment.  The  execu- 
tive of  the  union  is  to  use  their  best  endeavours 
to  verify  all  entries,  and  shall  be  answerable  as 
for  a  breach  of  this  award  in  case  any  entry 


82        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

therein  shall  be  wilfully  false  of  their  knowl- 
edge, or  in  case  they  shall  not  have  used  reason- 
able endeavours  to  verify  the  same.  The  book 
is  to  be  open  between  8  a.  m.  and  5  p.  m.  to  all 
employers.  In  case  of  the  failure  of  the  union 
accurately  to  keep  such  book,  the  employers 
shall  be  at  liberty  to  employ  other  than  members 
of  the  union.  Notice  by  advertisement  in  the 
Christchurch  morning  papers  is  to  be  given  of 
the  place  where  such  book  is  to  be  kept." 

Another  thing  the  court  demands  of  the 
trade-unions  in  return  for  this  preference  of  em- 
ployment given  them,  is  that  they  shall  not  be 
monopolies;  they  must  be  inclusive  not  ex- 
clusive. 

In  a  case  brought  by  some  iron  moulders,  the 
judge,  in  granting  the  union  preference  in  em- 
ployment, said  that,  at  the  same  time  it  was 
opposed  to  granting  anything  which  tended  to 
make  the  union  a  close  corporation.  The  court 
had,  therefore,  closely  examined  the  rules  of  the 
union  to  see  whether  there  was  any  provision 
against  the  admission  of  men  of  sober  habits 
and  good  character,  and  it  added  the  stipulation 
that  before  the  trade-unions  could  be  given  a 
preference  for  their  members,  they  must  not 
prohibit  the  admission  of  such  men. 

One  reason  for  the  very  severe  treatment 
given  the  Christchurch  engineers  already  spoken 
of,  was  that  the  judge  found  that  there  were  a 


No  Labour  Monopoly  83 

large  number  of  men  employed  in  the  district 
who  were  "not  only  debarred  from  becoming 
members  of  the  union  under  its  rules,  but  would, 
under  the  scheme  proposed  by  the  union,  be  de- 
barred from  working  in  the  trades  in  which  they 
are  at  present  employed." 

"Unions  which  sought  this  advantage,"  the 
judge  intimated,  "must  be  practically  open  to 
every  person  employed  in  the  trade  who  desires 
to  join." 

This  ruling  of  the  court  is  in  line  with  the 
general  policy  of  the  trade-unions,  which,  unlike 
other  monopolies,  usually  do  their  best  to  in- 
crease the  number  of  monopolists.  But  this 
court  has  made  it  easier  for  trade-unionists  in 
New  Zealand  to  live  up  to  it  than  elsewhere  by 
the  establishment  of  the  "minimum  wage." 

In  every  dispute  the  court  fixes  this  minimum 
or  average  wage.  Its  decisions  carefully  pro- 
vide for  superior,  average,  and  inferior  men. 
No  one  can  be  employed  for  less  than  the  aver- 
age, except,  as  has  been  already  explained,  men 
not  competent  to  earn  the  average,  and  the  rate 
paid  them  must,  if  questioned,  be  sanctioned  by 
the  local  Board  of  Conciliation. 

It  is  no  matter  to  the  trade-union,  then,  how 
many  members  it  admits;  there  is  no  danger 
that  the  overcrowding  will  lead  to  lower  wages, 
for  the  wages  cannot  be  lowered. 

The  object  of  the  Arbitration  law  was  to 


84       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

prevent  strikes.  These  rulings  of  the  Court  of 
Arbitration  make  the  institution  also  a  powerful 
instrument  in  the  mitigation  of  competition  be- 
tween workingmen,  and  in  the  maintenance  of 
higher  wages  and  a  better  standard  of  life. 

On  the  other  side  the  law  ameliorates  com- 
petition among  the  capitalists  by  preventing 
them  from  cutting  wages  in  order  to  cut  prices. 

Not  being  allowed  counsel  in  the  Arbitration 
Court  puts  the  workingmen  on  their  mettle  and 
will  have  a  mighty  educational  influence  upon 
them.  As  the  visitor  sees  the  presiding  judge 
disciplining  the  representatives  of  the  employers 
and  the  men,  he  realises  that  this  court  is  a 
school  for  "grown-ups."  The  judge,  despite 
himself,  cannot  sometimes  help  showing  an  irri- 
tation which  obviously  has  need  of  all  the  con- 
solation he  can  get  from  the  reflection  that  his 
school  is,  perhaps,  the  most  important  one  in 
the  world. 

In  one  of  the  cases  I  attended,  the  judge  had 
frequent  occasion  to  caution  the  representative 
of  a  union  on  his  conduct  of  the  evidence,  and  to 
advise  him  as  to  what  he  should  not  do.  Finally, 
his  Honour,  in  a  state  bordering  on  despair,  ex- 
claimed : 

"It  appears  to  me  that  so  far  as  the  proceed- 
ings of  this  court  are  concerned,  the  legal  pro- 
fession will  have  to  be  admitted.    You,"  he  sa 


A  School  for  Grown-ups  85 

to  the  union's  advocate,  "are  not  conducting  the 
proceedings  in  an  intelligible  manner,  and  all  I 
can  get  is  inference." 

The  educational  influence  of  the  court  extends 
to  other  matters  than  the  modes  of  arguing  the 
case  and  handling  evidence. 

At  a  meeting  of  the  Arbitration  Court  when 
a  witness  was  being  examined  as  to  his  average 
earnings,  his  Honour  said  it  was  the  duty  of  all 
trade-unionists  to  keep  a  proper  account.  If 
they  did  not  want  to  do  this  for  themselves,  they 
should  do  it  in  the  interests  of  their  union  and 
their  associates. 

And  on  the  same  day  an  employer,  called  by 
the  association  of  master-painters,  in  giving 
his  evidence  about  wages  and  other  matters, 
frequently  used  the  phrase  "I  think."  The  judge 
interrupted  him  to  say  that  an  employer  keep- 
ing books  should  "know,"  not  "think,"  and  that 
in  such  matters  as  these,  he  could  take  suppo- 
sitions only  for  what  they  were  worth. 

Mr.  Reeves,  in  first  presenting  his  bill,  laid 
stress  on  the  great  service  that  would  be  ren- 
dered the  community  in  the  simple  fact  that  it 
would  keep  industrial  disputes  free  from  passion. 

An  instance  of  this  occurred  on  the  first  day 
of  the  session  of  the  court  at  which  I  was  present 
at  Christchurch. 

One  of  the  advocates  was  putting  questions 


86        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

in  a  style  which  certainly  could  not  be  consid- 
ered polite,  but  which  there  would  have  been 
none  to  repress  in  an  old-time  conference  be- 
tween masters  and  men.  He  was  corrected  by 
the  judge,  who  said: 

"I  cannot  allow  insulting  language  or  insult- 
ing questions  to  be  used  in  this  court.  The  pro- 
ceedings must  be  conducted  with  the  same 
decorum  as  if  I  were  in  the  Supreme  Court,  and 
any  one  acting  to  the  contrary  will  be  excluded 
from  participating  in  the  proceedings." 

In  the  presence  of  the  presiding  judge,  a  per- 
son so  important  as  the  Judge  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  and  a  man  who  holds  their  destiny  in  his 
hands,  the  contestants  must  behave  themselves. 
Every  student  of  his  own  and  other  people's 
human  nature  knows  how  steadying  a  part  it 
plays  in  keeping  his  temper,  to  be  obliged  to 
look  and  act  as  if  he  were  keeping  it. 

Discussions  between  workingmen  and  their 
employers,  carried  on  without  such  restraining 
influences  as  are  found  in  the  Arbitration  Court, 
often  ripen  into  most  devastating  disputes  from 
the  mere  license  given  to  an  angry  tongue. 

The  point  has  been  made  that  the  arbitration 
act  as  administered  gives  an  unfair  advantage 
to  the  trade-unionists,  and  that  this  advantage 
goes  to  a  very  small  minority,  since  only  a  slight 
proportion  of  the  workingmen  in  New  Zealand, 
as  in  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States,  are 


Agreements  to  Strike  87 

organised.  Even  in  Great  Britain,  the  home 
of  trade-unionism,  only  about  one  sixth  of  the 
men  are  enrolled. 

To  this  extent  the  act  does  accentuate  an  in- 
equality. But  as  any  seven  men  can  form  a 
union  in  the  trade,  they  need  not  endure  this 
discrimination  a  day  longer  than  they  them- 
selves wish  to. 

The  only  circumstances  which  would  make  it 
possible  that  any  industrial  dispute  in  New  Zea- 
land should  escape  arbitration,  would  be  the 
entire  absence  of  any  organisation,  either 
among  the  masters  or  the  men. 

If  such  a  thing  were  conceivable  as  an  agree- 
ment between  the  employers  and  the  men  not  to 
invoke  the  courts,  but  to  go  on  striking  and 
locking  out  at  their  own  sweet  will,  and  should 
agree  for  that  purpose  to  refrain  on  both  sides 
from  organisation,  we  should  certainly  have  a 
case,  but  the  only  case  in  which  there  could  be 
no  arbitration. 

The  state  has  no  independent  power  of  its 
own  to  investigate  labour  troubles,  nor  to  move 
to  settle  them  of  its  own  motion. 

The  Minister  of  Labour,  Mr.  Reeves,  in 
offering  his  bill,  declared  himself  to  be  in  favour 
of  such  initiative,  but  thought  that  the  commu- 
nity was  not  yet  ripe  to  entrust  the  government 
with  such  power. 

The  New  Zealand  law  is  so  far  altogether 


88        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

individualistic.  Persons  can  compel  arbitra- 
tion, but  the  people  cannot.  The  protection  of 
the  public  interests  is  for  the  present  then  en- 
trusted to  the  initiative  of  the  aggrieved  indi- 
vidual, under  the  certainty  that  the  class  feeling 
between  labour  and  capital  is  strong  enough  to 
insure  action.  Trusts  like  those  now  coming 
into  favour  in  England,  such  as  that  of  the  bed- 
stead makers  of  Birmingham,  in  which  the  mas- 
ters and  the  men  have  united  to  fleece  the  public, 
would  not  be  very  promising  subjects  for  com- 
pulsory arbitration. 

The  organisation  of  capital  and  labour  both 
could  have  no  greater  stimulant  than  compul- 
sory arbitration,  and  for  the  trade-unions  it  has 
this  special  attraction :  Beyond  the  collective 
workingman  we  can  see  the  collective  capitalist 
in  the  trade-unions  saving  the  funds  they  now 
waste  in  strikes  for  making  contracts  on  their 
own  account,  and  for  co-operative  production, 
house  building,  land  owning  and  banking. 

By  a  late  decision,  January,  1900,  the  court 
rules  that  if  preference  of  employment  is  given 
trade-unionists  they,  on  their  side,  must  prefer 
employers  who  are  organised  in  associations 
rather  than  outsiders.  The  rule  must  work 
both  ways.  If  organised  labour  asks  prefer- 
ence, it  must  accord  organised  capital  the  same 
advantage. 


CHAPTER    IV. 

A    NEW    SONG    OF   THE    SHIRT. 

In  replying  to  a  gibe  from  the  London 
Times,  "that  the  act  does  not  inspire  others 
with  the  satisfaction  with  which  it  is  contem- 
plated by  its  author,"  Mr.  Reeves  wrote,  in 
1898: 

"As  for  my  'satisfaction,'  I  am  happy  that 
the  act  has  got  to  work  and  has  done  good  ser- 
vice during  three  years  of  use;  especially  am  I 
glad  that  it  has  helped  the  women  workers." 

There  is  no  chapter  of  the  operation  of  this 
new  institution  which  has  a  more  fascinating 
social  interest  than  that  which  tells  how  it  has 
helped  the  sewing  women  of  New  Zealand  out 
of  the  sweatshops,  and,  quite  as  important,  how 
it  keeps  them  out. 

The  clothing  trade  in  all  countries  is  a 
hatchery  for  the  foulest  evils  that  haunt  modern 
industry.  Its  workers  are  largely  women  and 
89 


90       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

children,  the  most  helpless  of  all.  Many  of 
them,  supported  at  home,  seek  the  occupation  to 
get  a  little  something  to  add  to  the  family  re- 
sources, and  for  pin  money.  They  drag  down 
the  wages — the  cost  of  production — of  those 
who  must  live  on  what  they  make. 

No  labour  struggles  are  more  deeply  distress- 
ing to  the  public  than  the  convulsive  efforts 
which  are  made  every  now  and  then,  so  ineffec- 
tually, by  the  working  girls  and  working  women 
of  these  trades,  to  escape  from  their  starvation 
wages  and  degrading  conditions  of  employment. 

The  conscience  of  the  New  Zealand  public 
was  swept  about  ten  years  ago  by  one  of  those 
waves  of  feeling  which  periodically  arouses  our 
people  as  well  to  a  feverish  interest  and  spas- 
modic attempts  to  find  a  remedy. 

At  both  ends  of  the  colony,  in  Auckland  and 
Wellington  in  the  north,  and  in  Dunedin  and 
other  cities  in  the  south,  the  workers,  aided  by 
clergymen  and  other  well-known  citizens,  and 
the  newspapers,  began  to  stir  to  put  an  end  to 
what  was  felt  to  be  as  much  a  danger  as  a 
scandal. 

In  Dunedin,  the  agitation  began  with  the 
shirt-makers  who  were  miserably  sweated. 
"Dunedin,"  as  one  of  its  senators  said  to  me  in 
describing  this  movement,  "is  a  small  town. 
Everybody  knows  everybody  else.     It  was  well- 


Protection  from  Competitors      91 

known  that  the  manufacturers  had  reduced 
wages  below  the  living  point.  It  had  become  a 
public  scandal.  There  was  no  difficulty  in  get- 
ting the  parsons  and  the  newspaper  men  to  take 
up  the  crusade  against  the  sweatshops.  The 
newspapers  and  the  clergymen  took  the  lead." 

Now,  Miss  Whitehorn,  the  Secretary  of  the 
Tailoresses  Union,  assured  me,  "Practically  all 
the  Dunedin  tailoresses  are  organised." 

In  this  work,  she  said,  "The  shirt-makers  and 
the  other  working  women  had  been  assisted  by 
almost  all  of  the  employers — all  but  six  or  seven 
— who  helped  them  to  organise. 

"One  of  the  most  important  uses  of  the  Com- 
pulsory Arbitration  Law,  these  manufacturers 
are  finding,"  she  continued,  "is  to  give  induce- 
ments to  the  workers  to  organise,  and  to  bring  the 
minority  of  the  masters  into  line.  It  is  used  in 
such  cases  not  against  the  employers  as  a  whole, 
but  against  those  of  them  who  are  irreconcil- 
able. The  majority  of  the  manufacturers  as 
well  as  the  master  tailors,  those  who  run  fac- 
tories and  those  who  have  shops,  favoured  the 
organisation  of  their  employes  into  trade- 
unions,  and  even  allowed  the  walking  delegates 
of  the  union  to  visit  the  shops  and  persuade  the 
workers  to* join  the  unions. 

"The  shirt-makers  and  other  factory  clothing 
workers  of  the  principal  towns  in  the  South  Isl- 


92       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

and,  Dunedin,  Christchurch  and  Wellington, 
are,  in  consequence  of  this  movement  and  the 
help  of  their  employers,  now  working  by  a  'log' 
— a  schedule  of  prices  and  conditions  arranged  at 
a  voluntary  conference  in  Wellington,  in  No- 
vember, 1897,  to  run  a  year,  afterwards  re- 
newed for  six  months, 

"The  employers  met  us  in  this  conference  in 
the  best  spirit.  They  could  not  have  been  more 
sociable.  They  took  tea  with  us  and  did  every- 
thing they  could  to  make  us  feel  that  they  de- 
sired to  help  us  better  our  condition. 

"This  conference  was  very  harmonious.  The 
masters  had  to  make  some  concessions  and  we 
had  to  make  some.  When  this  expires  in  May, 
1899,  there  will  probably  be  a  great  struggle  on 
account  of  the  situation  in  Auckland,  The 
workers  there  are  miserably  paid.  We  have 
spent  £300  ($1500)  in  the  effort  to  organise 
the  shirt-makers  and  tailoresses  of  Auckland. 
We  have  sent  some  of  our  best  leaders  there. 
We  sent  some  girls  who  were  good  organisers 
privately  to  work  in  the  Auckland  factories  to 
leaven  the  mass,  but  it  was  of  no  use.  There 
seems  to  be  a  most  complete  apathy  among  the 
workingmen  and  women  there.  There  is,  too, 
some  trade  jealousy,  for  the  Auckland  people 
are  afraid  they  may  lose  some  of  their  busi- 
ness, as  the  character  of  the  work  done  in  the 


Failure  of  Conciliation  93 

South  Island  is  much  superior  to  theirs.  The 
Dunedin  manufacturers  would  have  a  genuine 
grievance,"  this  working  woman  said,  "if  asked 
to  pay  higher  wages  than  are  paid  by  the  Auck- 
land manufacturers,  who  are  their  competitors." 

We  shall  see  later  how  these  fears  that  the 
poor  organisation  of  the  workers  of  Auckland 
might  threaten  the  welfare  of  the  workers  else- 
where, were  justified.  On  account  of  the  dis- 
organised condition  of  the  Auckland  operatives 
and  the  intractability  of  some  of  the  Auckland 
employers  the  private  peace  which  had  been  ar- 
ranged in  the  shirt-making  and  other  factory 
and  clothing  industries  by  voluntary  effort 
broke  down,  when  the  agreement  ran  out  in 
May,  1899,  as  the  Secretary  of  the  Dunedin 
tailoresses  had  apprehended. 

It  was  the  factory  workers  who  were  so  suc- 
cessful in  Dunedin  and  Christchurch  and  Well- 
ington in  arranging  an  agreement  until  May, 
1899. 

Whether  because  their  conditions  of  employ- 
ment were  not  so  deplorable,  or  whether  for 
some  other  reason  they  did  not  receive  the  same 
public  support,  the  girls  and  women  employed 
in  the  tailor  shops  of  Dunedin  and  Wellington, 
though  of  a  higher  class  industrially,  did  not 
succeed  in  holding  their  ground. 

While  their  sisters,  the  shirt-makers,  occupy- 


94        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

ing  a  lower  place  in  the  trade,  were  enjoying 
peace,  under  the  terms  of  their  private  concili- 
ation, the  tailoresses  of  the  shops  were  com- 
pelled to  go  to  the  Conciliation  Board  in  April, 
1898,  in  Wellington,  and  in  March,  1899,  in 
Dunedin. 

The  board,  in  making  its  award,  took  occa- 
sion to  note  that  the  difficulties  it  had  en- 
countered in  the  case,  which  had  been  very 
serious,  had  arisen  not  at  all  "from  any  ill  feel- 
ing or  want  of  forbearance  on  either  side — be- 
cause the  manner  in  which  the  dispute  had  been 
conducted  was  most  praiseworthy" — but  from 
technical  obstacles  peculiar  to  the  trade. 

To  overcome  this,  they  had  made  an  adjourn- 
ment for  a  fortnight  and  had  had  an  expert 
from  each  side  to  assist  them.  All  these  efforts, 
however,  "to  get  the  parties  closer  to  one  an- 
other" failed. 

As  the  board  did  not  award  the  Wellington 
tailoresses  the  wages  they  felt  they  ought  to 
have,  their  union  decided  to  refuse  to  accept  the 
award  of  the  Conciliation  Board,  and  the  matter 
went  before  the  Court  of  Arbitration. 

The  court,  before  undertaking  to  make  a  de- 
cision of  its  own  on  the  question,  adjourned  as 
the  Conciliation  Board  had  done,  to  see  if  a  pri- 
vate arrangement  could  not  be  made  between 
the  parties.     This  proved  impossible,  and,  after 


Private  Arbitration  Fails  95 

hearing  evidence  from  both  sides,  the  court 
made  its  award. 

In  this  it  practically  adopted  the  recommen- 
dations of  the  Conciliation  Board.  The  mini- 
mum wage,  for  instance,  for  coat-makers  was 
put  at  £1  I  OS.  ($7.50),  the  figures  fixed  by  the 
Conciliation  Board;  not  so  much  as  the  work- 
ing women  had  asked  for,  £1  17s.  6d.  ($9.37), 
but  more  than  the  masters  had  been  willing  to 
concede  £1  5s.  ($6.25). 

The  Arbitration  Court  also  reaffirmed  the 
preference  of  employment  for  members  of  the 
union,  which  had  been  strongly  opposed  by  the 
master  tailors  and,  to  put  an  end  to  sweating, 
stipulated  that  all  work  must  be  done  at  the  shop 
of  the  employer. 

This  award  settled  the  conditions  of  the  trade 
from  September,  1898,  to  September,  1900.  As 
a  result  of  this  arbitration,  Miss  Whitehorn  said, 
"We  are  a  lot  better  off  than  we  were." 

In  Dunedin,  as  in  Wellington,  the  tailoresses 
employed  in  the  merchant  tailors'  shops  were 
compelled  to  go  to  the  Court  of  Arbitration, 
while  the  shirt-makers  were  happily  at  peace  as 
the  result  of  their  private  negotiations  with  their 
employers. 

The  Dunedin  tailoresses  were  before  the  Court 
of  Arbitration  while  I  was  in  Dunedin.  Their 
representative,  in  his  address  to  the  court,  gave 


96        A  Country  Without  Strikes 

an  account  of  the  past  efforts  of  employers  and 
employes  to  harmonise  the  trade,  and  of  the  new 
conditions  which  had  broken  down  their  private 
peace.  The  agreement  which  was  made  after 
1892,  between  the  employers  and  employed  had 
lasted,  he  said,  for  some  years,  a  fact  which 
showed  the  good  feeling  that  existed,  but  things 
had  now  changed. 

A  large  number  of  new  firms  had  come  in, 
new  methods  of  business  had  been  introduced, 
many  of  the  old  abuses  prevalent  before  the  in- 
ception of  the  union  and  its  successful  negoti- 
ation with  the  masters,  such  as  sweating,  low 
wages  and  long  hours  were  beginning  to  make 
themselves  felt  again. 

Both  the  members  of  the  union  and  many  of 
the  more  important  employers  had  come  to  the 
joint  conclusion  that,  in  the  interest  of  both  of 
them  and  of  the  public,  a  new  settlement  should 
be  made,  otherwise  things  would  revert  to  the 
unfortunate  condition  of  ten  years  ago. 

In  pursuance  of  this  joint  understanding,  the 
representatives  of  the  union  and  of  their  em- 
ployers, the  Master  Tailors'  Association,  spent 
twelve  months  in  holding  meetings  and  con- 
ferring. As  a  result  of  these  combined  efforts, 
they  had  succeeded  in  preparing  another  "log." 
Out  of  forty-nine  employers  in  Dunedin,  forty- 
two  had  signed  this  "log"  as  satisfactory  to 
them.     There  were  only  seven  who  stood  out. 


An  Unexpected  By-Product       97 

An  appeal  was  made  to  the  Conciliation 
Board.  This  decided  in  favour  of  the  agree- 
ment made  by  the  union  and  the  forty-two  em- 
ployers, but  the  other  seven  remained  obdurate, 
and  the  Court  of  Arbitration  had  to  be  called 
upon  to  make  the  decisive  award. 

One  of  the  by-products  of  arbitration  made  its 
first  appearance  in  this  case.  It  indicates  an  un- 
expected use  of  arbitration,  and  shows  the 
benefits  that  accrue  to  the  community  from  com- 
pulsory publicity. 

Some  of  the  seven  employers  who  would  not 
come  into  line  in  the  agreement,  held  out,  as  the 
representative  of  the  working  women  showed 
the  court,  because  this  agreement  would  put  an 
end  to  a  fraud  which  was  being  practised  in 
their  shops  on  the  public.  They  were  in  the 
habit  of  taking  orders  for  clothing  to  be  made 
according  to  measure,  by  first-class  workers. 
But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  sent  the  order  to 
a  factory,  to  be  made  up  by  factory  workers  at 
factory  prices,  instead  of  sending  it  to  their  own 
tailors  and  tailoresses.  They  pocketed  the  dif- 
ference of  this  fraud  on  their  customers,  or  used 
the  money  they  thus  saved  in  cutting  prices,  to 
the  detriment  of  competitors  who  honestly  gave 
the  customer  what  he  paid  for. 

The  court  put  a  summary  stop  to  this  sort  of 
deception.  In  referring  to  this,  the  court  said 
in  its  decision : 


98       A  Country  Without  Strikes 

"All  bespoke  work — all  goods  made  and  sold 
as  tailor-made ;  also  any  order  in  which  there  is 
a  garment  fitted  on — shall  be  done  in  the  shop 
of  the  employer" — and  the  court  ordered  that  it 
should  be  paid  for  at  shop  and  not  factory 
prices. 

The  court  drily  remarked  to  the  representa- 
tives of  this  irreconcilable  minority  of  the  em- 
ployers that,  "They  would  have  to  come  in  under 
the  same  conditions  with  the  other  members  of 
the  trade,  if  they  were  going  to  continue  in  the 
tailoring  business." 

This  incident  shows  us  the  Compulsory  Arbi- 
tration law  working  steadily  as  a  force  for  hon- 
esty in  trade.  It  does  so  because  of  the  publicity 
it  insures.  The  workingmen  know  and  often  re- 
sent the  deceits  they  are  compelled  to  perpetrate. 
These  are  often,  as  in  this  case,  an  injury  to  them 
as  well  as  the  consumer  for  they  are  forced 
to  do  inferior  work  at  inferior  prices  or  to  see 
work  they  should  do  go  to  others  as  in  this 
case. 

The  open  court-room  of  compulsory  arbitra- 
tion gives  them  a  chance  to  let  out  the  "trade 
secret"  and  protect  both  the  public  and  them- 
selves. Where  there  is  an  Arbitration  Court, 
manufacturers  will  think  twice  before  they  make 
coffee  with  beans,  sugar  with  glucose,  or  scamp 
the  hidden  side  of  their  work,  for  their  working- 


How  to  Bind  New-comers        99 

men  may  some  day  come  before  the  court  and  let 
the  pubhc  into  this  awkward  secret  of  "my  busi- 
ness." 

The  decision  of  the  court  fixed  the  lowest 
rate  of  wages  to  be  paid  to  workers  at  £1  5s. 
($6.25)  a  week.  It  limited  the  number  of  ap- 
prentices to  one  to  every  three  operatives.  The 
hours  were  fixed  at  forty-five  in  each  week. 
Overtime  was  to  be  paid  for  at  the  rate  of  time 
and  a  quarter,  and  in  case  of  piece-work,  there 
was  to  be  2d.  (4  cents)  an  hour  extra.  No  ma- 
chinist was  to  machine  for  more  than  thirteen 
workers,  and  the  employers  were  required  to 
employ  competent  members  of  the  union  in  pre- 
ference to  non-members. 

New  difficulties  are,  of  course,  continually 
arising  in  the  application  of  the  procedure  of 
compulsory  arbitration  to  business  competitors. 

One  such  difficulty  arose  in  the  case  of  the 
arbitration  between  the  master  tailors  of  Well- 
ington and  their  employes.  Two  of  the  firms 
protested  against  being  bound  by  the  award,  on 
the  ground  that,  as  it  fixed  the  conditions  of 
business  for  two  years,  new-comers  in  the  trade, 
who  were  not  subject  to  the  award,  could  com- 
pete against  them  on  unfair  terms,  but  the  court 
found  a  way  to  meet  this  just  objection. 

It  directed  that  these  objectors  should  be 
bound  by  the  agreement  just  as  all  the  others  in 


loo     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

the  trade  were,  but  stipulated  that  the  union, 
if  any  new-comers  appeared  in  the  trade,  who 
attempted  to  under-cut  the  terms  fixed  in  the 
decision,  should  "take  the  necessary  steps  to 
compel  them  to  do  so,  within  fourteen  days  after 
notice." 

"If  the  union  fails,"  the  decision  continued, 
"to  comme"ce  and  carry  out  proceedings,  or,  if 
in  taking  such  proceedings,  it  shall  be  unable  to 
compel  such  persons  or  firms  to  conform  with 
the  terms,"  then  all  of  the  employers  were  to  be 
released. 

In  this  way  the  court  placed  upon  the  union 
the  burden  of  seeing  that  all  employers,  new- 
comers as  well,  were  brought  under  the  same 
conditions.  The  workingmen  could  easily  do 
this  because,  under  the  terms  of  the  Arbitration 
law,  they  can  proceed  against  any  employer. 

Justice  was  thereby  secured  to  all  the  em- 
ployers in  the  trade,  and  the  initiative,  in  seeing 
that  this  was  done  and  their  own  interests  pro- 
tected as  well,  was  properly  left  to  the  trade- 
unions,  which  had  been  the  prime  movers  in  re- 
sorting to  the  Court  of  Arbitration. 

It  is  time  now  to  turn  to  Auckland  and  the  part 
of  marplot  which  it  played  in  the  prosperity  of 
the  women  who  sing  the  Song  of  the  Shirt,  as 
the  secretary  of  the  union  foretold  would  happen. 
The  ferment  in  the  public  conscience  which  had 


Leading  Citizens  Lead  loi 

done  so  much  for  the  women  workers  of  Dun- 
edin  and  Wellington,  in  1892,  began  to  work  at 
the  same  time  in  Auckland. 

The  Honourable  W.  T.  Jennings,  when  the 
Auckland  shirt-makers  and  other  clothing  oper- 
atives came  before  the  Conciliation  Board  in 
November,  1897,  made  a  statement  of  their 
efforts  for  many  years  and  of  the  assistance 
which  they  had  received. 

The  movement  in  Auckland  began  a  little 
later  than  that  in  Dunedin.  How  much  need 
there  was  for  it  was  abundantly  shown  by  facts 
which  were  brought  to  light  in  1892.  The  rate 
of  pay  was  very  low.  Cases  were  discovered  of 
young  women  who  had  been  years  at  the  trade 
and  were  fairly  good  workers,  who  received 
only  9s.  ($2.25)  a  week.  The  evidence  of  the 
operatives  showed  that  the  average  was  about 
I  OS.  ($2.50)  a  week,  and  the  hours  for  work 
were  a  good  deal  over  ten. 

A  union  was  formed  in  1892,  but  the  manu- 
facturers fought  it  by  discharging  the  leaders, 
and,  in  fact,  any  of  the  operatives  who  could  be 
found  to  be  members. 

The  knowledge  of  this  intimidation  and  of 
the  wretchedness  out  of  which  sprang  this  effort 
of  the  shirt-makers  to  organise,  led  many  of  the 
best  men  and  women  in  the  community  to  come 
to  their  help.     A  public  meeting  was  held  under 


I02     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

the  auspices  of  the  most  influential  citizens,  and 
the  then  President  of  the  Auckland  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  in  his  address  declared  it  to  be  the 
duty  of  every  citizen  to  recognise  the  evils  of 
under  pay  and  intimidation,  and  to  rise  to  the 
duty  of  seeing  that  the  weaker  section  of  the 
community  received  protection. 

Among  the  other  citizens  who  assisted  this 
movement  were  a  number  of  employers.  Many 
of  them  did  so,  said  Mr.  Jennings,  "believing 
that  it  would  be  conducive  to  better  trade,  and 
would  also  tend  to  counteract  in  a  marked  de- 
gree the  'cutting'  practices  that  prevailed." 

There  were  many  conferences  between  the 
working  girls  and  their  employers,  but  after 
protracted  delays,  the  negotiations  broke  down, 
and  the  trade  reverted  to  the  anarchy  of  preced- 
ing years. 

But  after  the  Compulsory  Arbitration  law 
was  passed,  the  working  girls  renewed  their 
complaints,  the  union  was  resuscitated,  and  ne- 
gotiations with  the  manufacturers  were  re- 
sumed. 

After  ten  months  hard  work,  a  "log,"  or 
schedule  of  wages  was  prepared  that  was  accept- 
able to  both  employers  and  the  union.  There 
were,  however,  five  employers  who  refused,  like 
the  minority  of  employers  in  Dunedin,  to  concur 
in   the    "log,"   and    the   Auckland    Tailoresses 


Competition  by  Sweating        103 

Union,  therefore,  as  a  last  resort  submitted  the 
matter  to  the  Board  of  Concihation. 

In  stating  their  case  to  the  Board  of  Concilia- 
tion, their  representative  spoke  as  much  in  the 
name  of  the  manufacturers  who  had  agreed  to 
the  new  wages  as  in  that  of  their  employes. 

"It  is  undoubtedly  wrong,"  he  said,  "that 
honourable  and  fair-dealing  manufacturers 
who  are  prepared  to  pay  a  fair  wage  to  their  em- 
ployes should  have  to  compete  against  others 
who  are  working  their  factories  at  a  difference 
of  over  thirty  per  cent,  in  the  wages  of  their 
women  workers.  There  has  not  been  any  spirit 
of  antagonism  in  this  matter.  It  is  a  battle 
really  in  behalf  of  those  who  are  prepared  to  do 
the  right  thing  and  to  keep  down  the  extension 
of  the  sweating  system." 

The  Secretary  of  the  Union,  Mrs.  Hendre, 
also  addressed  the  court,  and  emphasised  the 
fact  that,  in  making  this  schedule  of  wages,  they 
had  been  treated  with  consideration  by  many  of 
the  manufacturers,  and  that  she  therefore  hoped 
this  dispute  would  be  amicably  decided. 

She  pointed  out  that  the  justice  of  the  claims 
made  by  the  union  was  proven  by  the  fact  that 
they  had  been  conceded  by  a  number  of  the 
firms. 

"We  are  not  asking  even  now,"  she  said, 
"what  the  southern  girls  are  getting." 


104     ^  Country  Without  Strikes 

This  co-operation  of  the  better  class  of  em- 
ployers with  the  employes  was  practically  uni- 
versal throughout  the  clothing  trade,  and  I 
found  it  existing  in  many  of  the  other  trades. 
Speaking  on  this  subject,  the  Honourable  John 
Rigg  said  in  the  Upper  House  of  the  New  Zea- 
land Parliament: 

"The  employers  see  that  where  the  conditions 
of  competition  are  on  an  equal  basis,  the  com- 
petition is  a  better  one  and  a  healthier  one,  and 
fairer.  They  suffered  more  under  the  old  state 
of  affairs  where  it  was  possible  for  a  man  to 
sweat  his  employes,  and  by  this  means  cut  down 
prices  to  such  a  stage  that  other  employers  could 
not  follow  him. 

"I  know  of  instances  where  the  employers  are 
working  now  hand-in-glove  with  the  unions  for 
the  purpose  of  keeping  up  organisation  and  ar- 
bitration. An  agreement  to  that  effect  was 
arrived  at  between  the  Federated  Tailoresses 
and  the  Federated  Employers,  representing 
Dunedin,  Christchurch  and  Wellington,  and  the 
employers  are  not  only  assisting  the  union  in 
many  matters,  but  especially  in  using  their  in- 
fluence to  get  their  employes  to  go  into  the 
unions." 

The  tailoresses  were  successful  in  their  appeal 
to  the  Conciliation  Board,  and  its  award  seems 
to  have  been  accepted,  as  no  further  proceedings 
appear  to  have  been  taken. 


Wages  Increased  105 

This  award  stipulated  that  the  manufacturers 
must  find  employment  for  all  competent  mem- 
bers of  the  trade-union  before  they  gave  work  to 
those  outside  the  union.  The  increase  in  pay 
allowed  the  tailoresses  in  Auckland  averaged 
fifteen  per  cent. 

A  great  lift  was  given  by  these  efforts  to  a 
trade  which  had  been  as  depressed  in  New  Zea- 
land as  it  is  through  the  rest  of  the  world. 

But  the  course  of  events  at  Auckland  after 
this  award  expired  was  not  so  favourable.  It 
justified  the  fears  of  the  secretary  of  the  Dun- 
edin  tailoresses  as  to  the  effect  upon  her  con- 
stituency of  the  weakness  of  labour  in  Auck- 
land. It  also  clearly  exemplified  the  superiority 
of  a  compulsory  tribunal  over  voluntary  concili- 
ation in  assuring  peace.  In  1899,  the  Auck- 
land tailoresses,  coming  again  to  a  difference 
with  their  employers,  did  not  go  to  the  Court  of 
Arbitration  as  before.  After  a  long  private 
negotiation,  they  and  the  employers  agreed  upon 
a  "log"  by  themselves. 

In  the  report  of  this  which  appeared  in  the 
Auckland  papers  of  June  2,  1899,  the  members 
of  the  union  were  described  as  jubilant  because 
several  important  increases  had  been  obtained. 

"As  it  has  been  accepted,"  the  Auckland 
News  said,  "by  all  parties  concerned,  there  will 
be  no  necessity  to  go  to  the  Board  of  Concilia- 
tion." 


io6     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

But  signs  soon  showed  that  the  workers 
would  have  done  much  better  for  themselves 
and  for  their  associates  and  the  rest  of  the 
colony,  if  they  had  gone  to  the  court  instead  of 
attempting  to  make  this  private  settlement.  For 
in  it  the  shirt-makers  and  tailoresses  of  Auck- 
land were  clearly  outgeneraled  by  their  employ- 
ers. Before  the  Board  of  Conciliation  they 
had  secured  preference  of  employment  for 
trade-unionists,  but,  in  this  agreement  by  pri- 
vate conciliation,  the  manufacturers  bound 
themselves  only  "not  to  discriminate  against 
members  of  the  union." 

The  Auckland  employers  were  evidently 
shrewdly  advised,  and,  it  is  probably  safe  to 
guess  were  acting  in  concert  with  the  associated 
manufacturers  of  the  rest  of  New  Zealand.  By 
thus  getting  rid  of  the  preference  to  trade-union- 
ists and  obliging  themselves  only  not  to  discrim- 
inate against  unions — a  very  different  thing — 
they  effected  a  breach  in  the  defences  of  the 
organised  clothing  workers  of  the  colony. 

That  this  private  settlement  with  the  clothing 
workers  of  Auckland  was  but  the  first  of  a  series 
of  manoeuvres  to  undo,  at  least  in  part,  what 
had  been  accomplished  in  behalf  of  all  the  sew- 
ing women  of  New  Zealand  before  the  Board  of 
Conciliation  and  Arbitration  Court,  appears 
from  subsequent  developments  which  took  place 
immediately. 


Radical  Employers  107 

The  radicals  among  the  employers  in  New  \ 
Zealand  are  against  trade-unions,  first,  last  and 
all  the  time,  as  they  are  in  the  rest  of  the  world, 
and  they  have  always  made  their  strongest 
fight,  both  outside  and  inside  the  Arbitration 
Court,  against  the  obligation  to  employ  all  the 
trade-unionists  before  they  employed  any  non- 
unionists. 

Hardly  had  the  Auckland  tailoresses  made 
this  settlement  by  private  conciliation,  in  which 
they  foolishly  waived  the  preference  for  union- 
ists, than  the  manufacturers  everywhere  pro- 
ceeded to  take  advantage  of  it. 

The  New  Zealand  Clothing  Manufacturers' 
Association,  representing  the  manufacturers  of 
the  whole  colony,  gave  notice  to  the  Board  of 
Conciliation  that  its  services  were  needed  in  an 
industrial  dispute  between  themselves  and  the 
Federated  Tailoresses  and  other  trade-unions  in 
the  clothing  industry.  They  significantly  sub- 
mitted with  this  notice  a  copy  of  the  new  "log" 
which  had  been  just  made  by  private  agreement 
in  Auckland,  as  a  basis  upon  which  they  desired 
a  settlement  of  the  dispute. 

It  is  evidently  their  intention  to  use  the  weak- 
ened position  of  the  Auckland  tailoresses  as  a 
standard  of  comparison  by  which  to  bring  down 
the  wages  and  conditions  of  employment  of  all 
the  shirt-makers  and  clothing  makers  through- 
out the  entire  colony.     They  will  undoubtedly 


io8     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

use  the  surrender  of  the  preference  for  unionists 
by  the  Auckland  working  women  as  a  precedent 
to  induce  the  court  to  take  away  the  preference 
from  the  workers  in  the  rest  of  the  country. 

This  is  one  of  the  few  cases  in  which  asso- 
ciations of  manufacturers  have  initiated  arbitra- 
tion proceedings.  So  far,  in  most  of  the  suits, 
the  manufacturers  have  been  on  the  defensive 
and  the  workingmen  have  been  seeking  the 
court,  but  now,  when  the  manufacturers  see  a 
possibihty  of  advantage  for  themselves,  they  are 
quick  to  appeal  to  the  Arbitration  law  for  its 
help. 

This  retreat  of  the  working  women  of  Auck- 
land, from  their  strongest  line  of  defence — 
unionism — and  the  ominousness  of  the  instan- 
taneous appeal  of  the  clothing  manufacturers 
of  the  entire  colony  to  the  Court  of  Arbitration 
to  make  the  same  terms  for  all  the  shirt-makers 
and  other  clothing  workers  as  the  Auckland 
manufacturers  have  made  for  those  in  Auck- 
land, have  roused  the  working  women  of  the 
southern  cities  to  renewed  efforts  to  retrieve  the 
situation. 

A  circular  comes  to  hand  as  I  write,  issued 
by  Miss  Whitehorn,  the  secretary  of  the  Dun- 
edin  branch  of  the  tailoresses'  trade-unions  of 
New  Zealand.  In  this  circular  she  says  the 
tailoresses    of    Wellington,    Christchurch    and 


An  Amendment  Needed        109 

Dunedin  are  threatened  at  the  present  time  by 
their  employers  with  a  reduction  of  their  present 
low  rate  of  wages  on  account  of  the  keen  compe- 
tition of  the  Auckland  manufacturers.  The 
Dunedin  Conciliation  Board  is  reluctant  to 
lower  the  existing  rates  of  wages,  yet  it  feels 
that  it  cannot  help  doing  so  unless  the  Auck- 
land manufacturers  and  operatives  are  dealt 
with  in  some  way  to  equalise  conditions  north 
and  south. 

Miss  Whitehorn  repeats  what  she  said  to  me 
with  regard  to  the  efforts  which  her  union  has 
been  making  for  ten  years  to  place  Auckland  on 
the  same  basis  of  wages  as  other  parts  of  the 
colony,  as  "they  recognise  it  is  only  fair  to  all 
concerned  that  equal  pay  for  equal  work  should 
be  applied  to  all  manufactured  clothing  in  the 
colony,  but  unfortunately  our  efforts  have 
proved  unavailing." 

Her  circular  then  goes  on  to  show  that  the 
Arbitration  Act  in  its  present  state  does  not  give 
any  help  in  solving  this  difficulty.  An  import- 
ant amendment  to  the  act  is  needed  and  this  has 
therefore  been  drafted  for  the  tailoresses  of  the 
southern  cities,  and  the  representative  of  their 
district  in  Parliament  has  consented  to  introduce 
it.     It  applies  of  course  to  all  trades. 

The  amendment  provides  that  as  soon  as  by 
voluntary    or    compulsory    arbitration    certain 


no     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

terms  have  been  established  for  a  majority  of 
the  employers  in  any  trade,  these  same  terms 
may  be  made  binding  on  all  the  rest  in  the  trade 
throughout  the  colony. 

The  effect  of  this  amendment,  if  adopted,  will 
be  that,  since  the  majority  of  the  New  Zealand 
clothing  trade  have  already,  in  Wellington, 
Dunedin,  Christchurch,  been  brought  into  agree- 
ment with  the  tailoresses  through  the  Court  of 
Arbitration,  the  manufacturers  of  Auckland, 
though  not  members  of  this  majority,  can  be 
compelled  by  the  court  to  give  their  tailoresses 
the  same  pay  and  the  same  conditions  as  the 
other  manufacturers. 

This  addition  to  the  law  will  give  the  Court 
of  Arbitration  power  to  enforce  on  the  minority 
terms  acceptable  to  a  majority.  Thus  the  court 
can  compel  a  minority  of  the  employers  in  any 
business  to  accept  and  abide  by  the  same  terms 
for  their  working  people  as  those  agreed  upon 
by  a  majority  of  their  competitors.  Compul- 
sory arbitration  here,  again,  means  government 
by  the  majority.  Under  this  majority  rule,  the 
lowering  of  wages  now  imminent  throughout 
the  entire  colony  in  the  clothing  trade,  by  such 
tactics  as  those  pursued  by  the  minority  of 
Auckland  manufacturers  would  be  rendered  im- 
possible. 

Since  the  act  has  been  invoked  in  the  clothing 
trades,  nothing  like  the  piteous  and  unavailing 


Still  Warfare,  but  Humane      1 1 1 

uprising  which  took  place  among  the  women 
workers  in  New  York  a  year  ago  is  possible  in 
New  Zealand.  There  have  been,  as  we  have 
seen,  continual  differences  in  the  trade,  but  there 
have  been  no  strikes,  and  no  need  for  them. 
None  of  the  disturbances  has  taken  on  a  more 
violent  character  than  that  which  we  can  observe 
in  the  proceedings  of  any  reasonable  debating 
society.  Higher  wages,  uniform  terms,  better 
conditions,  a  cessation  of  throat-cutting  compe- 
tition have  all  been  the  beneficent  results.  This 
is  at  least  a  humaner  manner  of  warfare,  even  if 
we  have  to  admit  that  it  is  still  warfare. 

Even  if  the  plan  of  campaign  of  the  Auckland 
manufacturers  and  their  fellow  members  in  the 
manufacturers'  association  proves  successful 
and  they  are  able  to  use  the  concessions  weakly 
made  by  the  operatives  in  Auckland,  to  take 
from  the  sewing  women  of  the  whole  country 
some  of  the  gains  won  from  the  Arbitration 
Court,  it  will  still  remain  true  that  the  result  of 
arbitration  has  been  a  great  uplift  in  the  condi- 
tion of  these  distressed  workers.  The  sweater 
has  been  sent  to  the  right-about.  He  may  yearn 
as  he  will  for  the  return  of  the  "good  old  times," 
and  for  the  music  so  sweet  to  his  ears  of  the 
Song  of  the  Shirt  as  it  used  to  be  sung,  but  he 
will  yearn  in  vain.  In  New  Zealand  the  old 
Song  of  the  Shirt  is  a  "lost  chord." 

The    relations    between    employer    and    em- 


112     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

ployed  are  still  those  of  contest.  It  is  still  a 
battle  that  might  be  to  the  strong,  a  race  that 
might  be  to  the  swift;  but  the  difference  be- 
tween the  two  kinds  of  struggle  is  the  difference 
between  a  fair  fight  in  an  open  field  and  a 
massacre. 

Under  the  old  procedure  of  the  old  Song  of 
the  Shirt,  the  members  of  the  New  Zealand 
Manufacturers'  Association,  as  soon  as  the 
Auckland  manufacturers  had  made  the  breach 
we  have  described  in  the  ranks  of  the  Auckland 
operatives,  would  have  cut  down  wages  through- 
out the  rest  of  the  colony,  and  would  have 
worsened  the  hours  and  the  conditions  of  em- 
ployment at  their  own  sweet  will. 

The  working  women  would  have  had  the 
choice  between  starving  rapidly  and  starving 
slowly.  Whether  they  struck  or  worked  on, 
they  would  have  to  retreat  from  the  room  in  the 
second  story  to  one  in  the  attic  or  the  cellar, 
from  a  scanty  table  to  one  still  scantier.  They 
would  have  made  their  last  stand  where  the  vis- 
itors of  the  poor  find  the  sewing  women  singing 
their  song,  with  a  cup  of  tea  and  a  crust  of 
bread. 

But  now,  around  the  sewing  women  of  New 
Zealand  all  the  powers  of  government  and  so- 
ciety have  drawn  the  protecting  ring  of  the 
state.     There  are  some  printed  pages,  beginning 


As  New  Zealand  Sings  It  113 

Be  It  Enacted,  on  the  shelves  of  ParHament, 
there  are  a  few  men  in  a  new  court-room  who 
now  have  to  be  reckoned  with  by  the  manufac- 
turer before  he  can  cut  those  wages  and  start 
the  women  on  their  way  back  to  the  tea  and  the 
garret  and  the  crust. 

Now  he  must  come  out  before  the  pubHc,  and 
in  the  presence  of  experts  and  judges,  he  must 
tell  why  he  would  do  these  things.  He  cannot 
deceive  the  public  with  glowing  accounts  of  the 
immense  wages  that  his  women  make.  What- 
ever he  ventures  to  assert  on  this  subject,  he 
must  prove,  and  he  must  prove  it  before  men 
accustomed  to  weigh  such  statements,  and  who 
know  all  about  the  lies  that  figures  can  be  made 
to  tell.  And  they  will  look  at  his  books,  too,  if 
they  think  it  best  to  do  so  in  the  interests  of  truth 
and  humanity. 

Meanwhile,  along  with  this  inquiry  in  the  new 
court-room,  the  work  goes  on.  The  sewing 
woman  stays  where  she  is  in  the  factory  kept 
clean  and  light  and  wholesome  by  the  state,  and 
she  does  not  have  to  strike ;  she  cannot  be  locked 
out;  her  work  cannot  be  taken  from  herj  her 
wages  cannot  be  cut  down. 

This  is  the  new  Song  of  the  Shirt, 


CHAPTER    V. 

THIS    LAW    OF    PARLIAMENT    BECOMES   A 
LAW    OF    TRADE. 

By  this  time  the  observant  reader  will  have 
made  the  discovery  which  I  made — a  discovery 
which  will  do  more  to  explain  the  compulsory 
arbitration  of  New  Zealand  than  all  the  contro- 
versial matter  he  can  find  in  the  newspapers, 
or  in  all  the  political  economies.  Compulsory 
arbitration  has  been  a  success  in  New  Zealand 
because  the  people  wanted  to  arbitrate. 

The  New  Zealand  people  exhausted  private 
effort  to  establish  arbitration  as  we  have  seen  in 
several  trades.  When  they  failed  repeatedly  in 
these  private  efforts  and  discovered  that,  though 
a  majority  wanted  arbitration  it  was  continually 
defeated  by  an  intractable  minority,  they,  as  was 
natural,  being  also  a  democratic  people,  got  ar- 
bitration for  themselves  by  the  political  instru- 
ment at  hand  in  their  democracy — i.  e.,  by  a  law. 
Law  is  the  instrument  through  which  de- 
114 


A  Choice  of  Evils  115 

mocracy  equips  a  majority  to  maintain  its  wel-  [ 
fare  ag-ainst  the  attacks  of  an  anti-social  mi-' 
nority.  ' 

It  is,  of  course,  an  evil  to  need  to  have  "laws." 
But  it  is  a  greater  evil  to  have  an  anti-socia' 
minority  knocking  holes  in  the  bottom  of  the 
ship.  If  the  Tolstoians  will  abolish  the  scut- 
tling minority,  we  will  abolish  the  "law  based 
on  force." 

This  pre-disposition  of  the  New  Zealand  peo- 
ple for  arbitration  argues  a  high  intelligence  and 
a  high  character  and  high  political  vigour — the 
intelligence  to  see  the  waste  and  inaccuracy  of 
battle-field  arbitration,  the  character  that  prefers 
kinder  and  juster  ways,  and  the  virility  to  use 
their  votes  to  execute  their  will. 

We  see  in  New  Zealand,  in  case  after  case, 
that  the  New  Zealanders  are  an  arbitrating  peo- 
ple. Arbitration  was  not  sprung  on  them  by 
theorists,  or  an  innovating  minority.  The  busi- 
ness men  were  moving  in  that  direction,  and,  if 
they  could  have  succeeded  privately,  they  would 
not  have  had  to  have  a  law.  The  law  was  a  suc- 
cess with  them  simply  because  it  expressed  and 
effectuated  an  opinion  which  the  people  had 
already  formed.  It  satisfied  a  need  of  which 
they  were  already  conscious. 

A  compulsory  arbitration  law  for  a  people  not 
yet  developed  enough  for  the  majority  to  seek  to 


1 1 6     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

arbitrate  voluntarily,  would  be  a  folly.  Equally, 
to  say  that  among  a  people  where  the  majority 
wanted  to  arbitrate,  a  compulsory  arbitration 
law  would  be  unnecessary,  is  to  contradict  the 
obvious  fact  that  an  unappeasable  minority  can, 
under  the  voluntary  system,  defeat  arbitration, 
and  can  do  it,  as  Mr.  Reeves  said  to  the  New 
Zealand  Parliament,  for  generation  after  gener- 
ation. The  compulsion  is  not  needed  for  the 
people  in  such  a  case,  but  for  the  minority  who 
are  defying  and  outraging  the  people. 

Here  the  New  Zealanders  show  themselves  to 
be,  as  in  many  other  things,  of  the  newest 
Anglo-Saxondom,  for  the  Anglo-Saxon  has 
always  been  a  pioneer  in  arbitration,  though  he 
still  fights  too  much. 

The  only  insuperable  difficulties  about  com- 
pulsory arbitration  have  been  the  imaginary 
ones;  all  the  real  difficulties  have  been  sur- 
mounted one  by  one  as  they  appeared.  The 
great  bugbears  of  the  disbelievers  have  been, 
"You  cannot  make  men  work  by  act  of  Parlia- 
ment," and  "You  cannot  fix  prices  by  law." 

I  found  the  opponents  of  compulsory  arbitra- 
tion in  New  Zealand  g^etting  great  comfort  from 
the  arguments  against  it  which  were  furnished 
by  the  London  Times  in  a  controversy  then 
on  between  it  and  the  Agent-General  of  the 
colony  in  London,  Mr.  Reeves,  the  author  of  the 


Not  Satisfied  but  Content       1 1 7 

law.  A  number  of  distinguished  men  took 
part  in  the  controversy,  the  Bishop  of  Hereford, 
Lord  Monkswell,  Lord  Thring,  and  others  well 
known  in  the  Enghsh  world  of  thought  and  ac- 
tion, and  an  anonymous  correspondent,  "R," 
whose  communications  were  always  given  the 
place  of  honour  by  the  Times,  and  who  was  well 
understood  to  be  Lord  Rosebery.  The  articles 
were  widely  reprinted  in  the  colony,  and  dis- 
cussed everywhere. 

The  subject  came  up  one  day  in  a  group  at 
the  club  in  Wellington.  One  of  the  critics  of 
the  law  quoted  triumphantly  from  a  letter  of 
Lord  Thring's. 

"Is  it  conceivable  that  at  the  close  of  the 
nineteenth  century  either  masters  or  men  would 
submit  to  such  a  tyrannical  judicial  interference 
with  their  liberty?" 

"For  five  years,"  replied  one  of  the  New  Zea- 
landers,  "masters  and  men  have  been  submitting. 
They  may  not  be  satisfied.  Where  anywhere 
are  there  satisfied  capitalists  or  labourers? 
Where  is  there  an  employer  who  would  not  like 
to  pay  less,  where  the  workingman  who  would 
not  like  to  get  more?  But  they  are  all  at  work, 
though  not  satisfied.  In  New  Zealand  it  is 
proved  that  the  Arbitration  Court  can  make  de- 
cisions which  both  sides  would  rather  accept 
than  to  quit,  as  they  always  have  the  right  to  do. 


1 1 8     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

"The  London  Times,  from  which  you  get 
this  remark  of  Lord  Thring's,"  the  speaker  con- 
tinued, "says  that,  if  a  court  makes  an  intol- 
erable award,  employers  will  close  their  doors. 
In  this  the  Times  is  quite  right.  It  is  there- 
fore the  strongest  possible  commendation  of  the 
act  in  its  theory  and  practice  that  the  employers 
do  not  close  their  doors,  but  keep  on  doing  busi- 
ness and  making  money,  and  this,  too,  although 
the  awards  have  almost  all  been  against  them. 

"We  all  know  that  there  have  been  numbers 
of  withdrawals  from  business  in  England  on 
account  of  strikes.  As  a  result  of  the  strike  of 
the  Amalgamated  Society  of  Engineers  a  year 
ago,  some  very  important  concerns  that  I  know 
of  moved  their  works  to  Russia  and  Belgium 
and  other  countries.  There  have  been  no  such 
withdrawals  from  New  Zealand  on  account  of 
the  'tyranny'  of  our  Arbitration  Court. 

"Our  position  in  New  Zealand  is  this :  Indus- 
try is  a  joint  enterprise.  We  say  to  the  capital- 
ists : 

"  'You  and  the  labourer  and  the  consumer  and 
the  public  are  all  interested.  We — the  state — 
are  the  only  agency  known  to  society  which  can 
protect  and  harmonise  all  these  interests,  pro- 
vided always  that  you  cannot  or  will  not  har- 
monise yourselves.  We  cannot  leave  you  to 
settle  with  each  other  in  the  old  way,  for  that  we 


The  Capitalists  do  not  Fly       1 1 9 

know  by  experience  leads  to  strikes,  devastation, 
hate,  and  even  bloodshed.  In  this  world  of 
capitalists,  labourers,  consumers,  and  citizens, 
you,  the  employing  capitalists  are  a  very  small 
minority.  We  don't  propose  to  sacrifice  you  or 
do  you  any  injustice,  but,  rest  assured,  neither 
do  we  intend  to  allow  you  to  do  us  any  wrong  or 
injustice.  You  can  stay  in  this  business  or  go 
out  of  it,  as  you  choose.  You  can  go  into  any 
business  you  prefer,  but,  if  you  stay  in  business 
in  New  Zealand,  you  must  settle  your  irreconcil- 
able differences  between  yourselves  and  your 
men  by  reference  to  a  disinterested  arbiter,  and 
not  by  strikes  or  lockouts.  You  can  have  an 
arbiter  of  your  own,  if  you  prefer,  but  an  arbiter 
you  must  have,  and  we  will  furnish  the  arbiter, 
if  you  do  not  find  one  for  yourselves,' 

"Of  course,"  he  went  on,  "some  of  the  capi- 
talists at  first,  as  they  always  do,  said  they 
would  'leave  the  country,'  but  our  reply  was : 

"  'Those  are  the  only  terms  on  which  you  can 
do  business  in  New  Zealand.  If  you  don't  like 
it,  leave.' 

"But  they  did  not  leave.  They  stay,  they  ar- 
bitrate, and  they  prosper." 

A  man  prominent  in  labour  matters  here  took 
up  another  point  in  Lord  Thring's  letter. 

"In  the  same  article  Lord  Thring  asks,"  he 
said,  "  'Suppose  one  thousand  men  refused  to 


I  20      A  Country  Without  Strikes 

obey  an  award  and  would  not  go  to  work  on  the 
terms  it  prescribed,  is  it  within  the  range  of  pos- 
sibiHty  that  the  court  would  be  able  to  imprison 
and  fine  one  thousand  men  without  producing 
riots  more  injurious  than  the  strike?' 

"We  see  the  capitalists,"  the  labour  man  said, 
"all  over  the  world  succeed  in  forcing  the  work- 
ingmen  to  go  to  work  on  terms  unsatisfactory  to 
them.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  the  state  is  less 
powerful  than  the  capitalists?  And  are  not  the 
workingmen  more  likely  to  obey  a  decision  in 
the  making  of  which  they  have  been  represented 
than  in  one  made  by  the  capitalists  who  would 
not  receive  their  delegates,  nor  listen  to  a  word 
from  their  side?  The  workingmen  certainly 
would  riot  and  smash  things,  if  the  decision 
were  absolutely  intolerable.  In  the  last  five 
years  in  Europe  and  America  there  have  been 
riots,  arson,  and  even  dynamite  in  consequence 
of  decisions  forced  on  labour  by  capital,  but  no- 
where has  there  been  a  breath  of  disturbance  in 
New  Zealand  on  account  of  any  decision  forced 
on  labour  by  arbitration,  and  labour  has  had  to 
submit  to  some  things  from  the  Arbitration 
Court  which  it  found  very  hard  to  accept." 

In  the  same  conversation  the  London  Spec- 
tator was  quoted  as  expressing  the  opinion 
that  compulsory  arbitration  made  slaves  of  the 
workingmen : 


A  Popular  Slavery  1 2 1 

"If  wages  are  fixed  by  the  external  authority 
of  a  court,  the  individual  workman  must  accept 
them,  that  is,  must  become  practically  a  slave 
for  the  benefit  of  the  community." 

"The  workingman  has  no  choice,  in  any  case 
with  or  without  arbitration,"  his  representative 
retorted,  "but  to  'accept  wages  that  are  fixed/ 
The  only  practical  question  for  him  is,  how  are 
they  to  be  fixed?  In  the  world  of  strikes  and 
lockouts,  he  usually  has  to  submit  to  wages  fixed 
by  force,  economic  violence,  which  denies  him 
hearing,  information,  the  right  to  organise,  or 
even  recognition. 

"In  the  case  of  arbitration  he  submits  to  a  de- 
cision given  by  the  nearest  approach  to  a  disin- 
terested outsider  that  human  ingenuity  can 
provide.  The  decision  is  based  expressly  upon 
the  recognition  of  his  equality  of  rights,  and  on 
the  fullest  examination  by  him  and  for  him  of 
every  book,  paper  and  person  necessary  for  the 
discovery  of  all  the  facts  affecting  his  interest. 
The  workingmen  of  New  Zealand  like  that  kind 
of  'slavery.'  They  are  practically  all  registered, 
and  the  employers  like  the  same  kind  of  'slav- 
ery,' for  the  most  important  of  them  are  regis- 
tered under  the  law — the  shoe  manufacturers, 
the  clothing  manufacturers,  the  great  coal  com- 
panies, the  steamship  owners,  and  many  others." 

The  letters  of  "R,"  whom  everybody  believed 


122     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

to  be  Lord  Rosebery,  came  in  for  their  share  of 
attention.  "R,"  speaking  of  what  would  hap- 
pen, if  the  court  made  a  decision  intolerable 
either  to  workingmen  or  employer,,  had  said : 

*'In  either  case,  the  award  is  a  dead  letter ;  the 
court  is  impotent,  and  the  law  of  the  market  is 
supreme,  as  it  was  in  the  beginning  and  ever 
shall  be." 

A  friend  of  Mr.  Reeves  who  was  present  read 
the  reply  which  Mr.  Reeves  had  made  to  *'R"  in 
the  Times. 

"Why  assume  that  the  awards  of  a  competent 
tribunal  will  be  intolerable  to  one  side  or  the 
other?  It  is  likely  enough,  nay,  certain,  that  all 
awards  must  be  disagreeable  to  somebody,  but 
intolerable  is  a  word  which  pre-supposes  that 
awards  are  likely  to  be  made  which  will  involve 
one  side  or  the  other  in  ruin,  or  drive  it  to  des- 
peration." 

To  this  he  added  the  remark  which  Mr. 
Reeves  made  in  answer  to  the  same  objection 
when  the  bill  was  before  Parliament. 

"This  court  may  be  assumed  to  have  common 
sense  and  not  to  be  composed  of  unreasonable 
madmen." 

"Moreover,"  Mr.  Reeves'  friend  continued, 
"the  law  of  arbitration  has  now  become  part  of 
the  'law  of  the  market.'  The  New  Zealand 
theory  is  that  a  judge,  skilled  in  the  examin- 


The  Better  Judge  123 

ation  of  facts  and  in  the  disentanglement  of  con- 
troversies, assisted  by  experts  from  both  sides, 
and  by  additional  experts  if  needed,  can  tell 
better  what  the  'law  of  the  market'  is  than  the 
employers  or  employes,  drunk  with  greed,  pas- 
sion or  stupidity.  Compulsory  arbitration  does 
not  attempt  any  interference  with  the  'law  of 
the  market.'  On  the  contrary,  it  gives  the  'law 
of  the  market'  for  the  first  time  a  full  chance  to 
work.  It  brings  the  'law  of  the  market'  into 
full  and  free  discussion.  It  offers  experts  who 
know  the  'law  of  the  market'  best  on  both  sides 
to  tell  all  they  know  about  it.  It  gives  it  pub- 
licity and  debate.  It  is  true  the  arbiter  makes 
the  decision,  but  a  decision  must  be  made  any- 
how, and  has  been  made  heretofore  in  most 
cases  by  the  casting  vote  of  suffering,  selfish- 
ness, or  passion.  The  casting  vote  of  Judge 
Edwards  is  better,  we  New  Zealanders  think." 

There  was  a  senator  present,  one  of  the  Lib- 
erals, and  a  man  who  claimed  to  be  a  friend  of 
the  law,  but  he  insisted  that  "its  compulsion 
made  it  odious,"  and  he  argued  that  "public 
opinion  should  be  the  only  force  behind  the  law." 

One  of  the  most  successful  business  men  and 
large  employers  in  New  Zealand  said  in  reply  to 
him: 

"The  compulsory  feature  of  the  law  is  a  ne- 
cessity, for  it  fixes  the  moral  position  of  the 


124     ^  Country  Without  Strikes 

parties,  if  they  should  either  of  them  break 
through  the  award.  Our  reliance  that  awards 
will  not  be  unreasonable  can  safely  rest  upon 
the  general  common  sense  of  the  court  and  the 
public." 

And  the  labour  member  said  as  to  this  point : 

"As  for  the  force  of  public  opinion,  which 
you  are  so  anxious  to  have  as  the  only  force  be- 
hind the  award,  we  will  agree  to  that  as  soon  as 
public  opinion  is  made  the  only  force  behind  all 
other  laws,  and  no  sooner." 

The  labour  member  was  a  trifle  bitter  in  pri- 
vate conversation  afterwards,  in  his  comments 
upon  this  liberal.  He  accused  him  of  being  one 
of  those  who  tried  at  the  preceding  session  of 
Parliament,  under  the  cover  of  friendship  for 
the  law,  to  cripple  its  most  important  provision, 
next  to  compulsory  arbitration,  that  is,  prefer- 
ence to  trade-unions,  by  having  the  title 
amended  so  as  to  strike  out  the  words,  '*to  en- 
courage the  formation  of  industrial  unions  and 
associations," 

The  amendment  was  made,  but  the  court,  as 
I  have  explained  elsewhere,  continued  in  its 
policy  of  giving  the  trade-unions  preference 
wherever  possible. 

"You  will  not  find  opponents  of  the  law  like 
him,"  said  the  labour  member,  "declaring  them- 
selves against  its  arbitration  but  only  against  its 


Compulsion  Everywhere        125 

compulsion.  All  the  enemies  of  the  law,  in 
fact,  avow  themselves  passionate  devotees  of 
arbitration,  and  all  they  ask  is  that  the  compul- 
sion shall  be  stricken  out  of  the  law,  so  that  they 
can  give  the  world  the  magnificent  spectacle  of 
voluntary  arbitration  for  which  they  yearn. 
But  these  same  men  refused  arbitration  when  it 
was  not  compulsory.  At  the  worst,  the  compul- 
sion, we  think,  can  do  them  no  real  harm,  since 
it  only  forces  these  devotees  of  arbitration  to 
do  what  they  profess  to  be  willing  to  do  without 
the  law.  If  they  had  given  us  conciliation  when 
it  was  in  their  power,  we  would  not  have  asked 
for  compulsion." 

It  is  plain  that  the  vast  majority  of  the  people 
of  New  Zealand  are  not  at  all  shocked  by  the 
"compulsion"  on  which  so  many  changes  are 
rung  by  the  opponents  of  the  law.  They  re- 
gard "compulsion"  as  a  very  proper  instrument 
to  be  used  by  democracy  when  it  is  necessary  to 
protect  the  rights  of  the  majority  against  the 
minority. 

"We  cannot  understand,"  was  said  to  me, 
*'why  compulsion  cannot  be  used  to  prevent  eco- 
nomic crime  as  well  as  any  other  crime,  or  to 
repel  economic  invasion  of  one  class  by  another, 
which  is  just  the  same  thing,  for  all  intents  and 
purposes,  as  the  invasion  of  one  country  by 
another." 


126     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

The  compulsion,  too,  is  defended  by  citing  the 
precedents  given  by  the  factory  acts,  the  laws 
for  the  regulation  of  mining,  sanitary  conditions 
and  other  labour  matters,  the  regulation  of  rail- 
road rates  in  all  civilised  countries.  In  one  of 
the  cases  before  the  Arbitration  Court,  the 
judge  said: 

"There  is  coercion  in  everything,  and  the  only 
question  is,  where  is  coercion  to  begin,  and 
where  is  it  going  to  end.  A  man  is  not  allowed 
to  ride  his  bicycle  along  the  footpath;  he  is 
coerced  into  riding  along  the  muddy  road." 

In  a  debate  in  Parliament  on  the  compulsory 
feature  of  the  law,  one  of  its  defenders  quoted 
the  words  of  William  Pitt,  when  speaking  on 
the  Arbitration  Act  of  his  day,  which  was  an- 
alogous in  principle  to  the  New  Zealand  law. 

"The  time  will  come  when  manufactures  will 
have  been  so  long  established,  the  operatives  not 
having  any  other  position  to  fill,  that  it  will  be 
in  the  power  of  any  one  man  in  a  town  to  reduce 
wages  and  all  the  other  manufacturers  must  fol- 
low. If  ever  it  does  arrive  at  this  pitch.  Parlia- 
ment, if  it  be  not  then  sitting,  ought  to  be  called 
together,  and,  if  it  cannot  redress  your  griev- 
ances, its  power  is  at  an  end.  Tell  me  not  that 
Parliament  cannot.  Its  power  is  omnipotent 
to  protect." 

"It  is  not  a  choice,"  one  of  the  group  said. 


Voluntary  Compulsion  127 

"between  compulsion  and  no  compulsion;  it  is 
a  choice  between  two  kinds  of  compulsion,  that 
of  a  court,  or  that  of  labourers  or  capitalists, 
resorting  to  what  Mr.  Reeves,  in  urging  the  bill, 
called  their  'sacred  right  of  insurrection.'  " 

"After  all,"  urged  another,  "the  compulsion 
is  voluntary.  The  contestants  are  free  to  have 
their  own  arbitrator,  if  they  choose,  but,  if  they 
will  not  choose  one,  the  people  will  do  it  for 
them.  Disinterested  men  can  be  found,  and 
disinterested  men  can  find  the  truth.  By  giving 
this  duty  of  disinterested  decision  to  a  Judge  of 
the  Supreme  Court,  more  honest,  competent  and 
just  than  the  average  citizen,  the  state  guaran- 
tees that  the  decision  by  compulsory  arbitration 
will  be  in  the  long  run  more  advantageous  to 
the  warring  parties  than  one  made  by  them- 
selves. 

"The  compulsion  is  not  for  the  majority,  but 
for  the  minority.  The  majority  both  of  em- 
ployers and  employes  in  many  trades  wanted  to 
arbitrate,  but  they  could  not  until  this  law  was 
passed,  because  the  minority  would  not.  As  in 
other  laws  so  in  this,  compulsion  is  not  for  the 
good  men,  but  for  the  bad  men.  Good  citizens 
do  not  feel  that  they  pay  their  taxes  under  com- 
pulsion, they  are  willing  to  pay,  and  they  are 
willing  to  have  a  compulsory  law  on  the  statute 
book  to  compel  not  themselves,  but  the 
shirkers." 


128     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

The  gentlemen  who  were  attacking  the  law, 
here  changed  to  their  other  argument. 

"You  can't  fix  prices  by  law,  neither  prices 
of  labour  nor  of  anything  else." 

"As  a  matter  of  fact,"  said  the  labour  repre- 
sentative, who  had  made  a  similar  reply  to  the 
similar  argument  about  "the  impossibility  of 
making  men  work  by  law,"  "the  Arbitration 
Court  does  fix  prices  and  fix  them  so  that  the 
employers  are  willing  to  pay  them,  and  the 
employed  are  glad  to  receive  them.  But  it  is 
not  really  correct  to  say  that  this  is  a  case  of 
wages  'fixed  by  law.'  The  law  does  not  fix  the 
prices.  The  price  is  fixed  by  the  facts  of  the 
economic  situation.  By  our  tribunal,  for  the 
first  time  in  any  civilised  country,  the  facts  of 
the  case  can  be  found,  published,  and,  where 
there  is  a  dispute,  settled  by  an  umpire  whose 
decision  all  can  trust.  The  law  simply  sees  to  it 
that  the  decision  between  conflicting  claims  as  to 
prices  is  made  by  discussion  and  disinterested- 
ness, and  not  by  force,  or  fraud,  or  secrecy." 

"Suppose,"  said  an  American  who  was  pres- 
ent, "suppose  the  Court  of  Arbitration  selected 
by  a  'boss'  should  decide  that  a  dollar  and  a  half 
for  twelve  hours'  work  a  day  was  enough  for 
the  men,  how  would  the  workingmen  like  that  ?" 

"How  do  they  like  what  they  get  now?"  was 
the  answer  of  the  New  Zealander,  "forced  to 


Fixing  Prices  129 

strike  as  they  are,  with  no  chance  of  pubHcity, 
and  to  submit  to  a  decision  backed  by  injunc- 
tions, Pinkertons,  and  the  military? 

"Force  to  compel  a  factory  to  run  at  a  loss 
would  be  worth  nothing.  Force  to  compel  a 
prosperous  manufacturer  to  reveal  his  prosperity 
so  that  his  workingmen  may  share  his  prosperity 
is  force  that  counts  for  a  great  deal,  and  that  is 
where  the  shoe  pinches  the  men  who  Svant  it  all.' 
The  compulsion  is  not  that  the  manufacturer 
shall  run,  but  that  while  he  runs,  he  shall  run 
justly.  Society  certainly  has  the  right  to  decree 
and  enforce  this.  There  is  no  'fixing  wages  by 
law,'  no  compulsion,  no  interference,  excepting 
in  one  contingency.  Masters  and  men  are  left 
free  to  make  any  agreement  they  choose;  they 
can  negotiate  privately;  trade-unions  can  be  re- 
fused recognition  or  not ;  they  can  mediate  their 
differences  by  any  form  of  voluntary  concilia- 
tion or  arbitration  they  like;  the  employer  can 
give  up  his  business,  the  workingman  can  change 
his  occupation.  The  state  says  nothing.  But 
the  moment  one  party  attempts  to  force  the 
other,  the  State  of  New  Zealand  can  be  called  in, 

"  'Fixing  by  law'  is  an  odious  phrase.  How 
about  fixing  prices  by  the  fiat  of  a  corporation  or 
a  capitalist  or  by  bayonets,  or  by  starvation  or 
intimidation?  Here,  'law'  means  debate;  the 
lack  of  it  means  destruction  for  the  men.     The 


130     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

law  does  not  dictate  nor  fix  wages,  but  merely 
decides  in  a  dispute  between  two  different  views 
of  what  wages  should  be.  'Law'  fixes  creditors' 
shares  in  bankruptcy,  lowers  Irish  and  Scotch 
rents,  fixes  the  price  of  ferries,  railroads,  the 
salaries  of  state  officials,  rate  of  taxation. 

"Our  Arbitration  Court  simply  determines 
what  is  just  between  two  parties  under  existing 
economic  conditions.  It  does  not  attempt  to 
create  or  modify  economic  conditions.  It  does 
not  try  to  compel  either  labour  or  capital  to 
work,  but  it  does  try  to  prevent  either  from 
throwing  upon  the  other  all  the  burden  of  the 
fluctuations  in  supply  and  demand.  It  will  not 
allow  them  to  coerce  each  other  by  economic 
force  either  of  labour  or  capital.  If  economic 
conditions  are  such  that  the  industry  cannot  be 
carried  on  by  capital  without  ruin,  or  by  labour 
without  starvation,  the  disputant  who  is  in  the 
right  can  easily  make  the  court  see  that.  The 
court  simply  does  the  best  that  can  be  done  to 
effect  a  proper  distribution  of  the  economic 
pressure  on  the  two  parties." 

The  practical  ability  of  the  judges  and  the 
consideration  they  have  shown  for  all  sides  have 
liad  a  great  deal  to  do  with  making  compulsion 
workable.  The  judge,  who  "knows  nothing 
of  business,"  sometimes  proves  to  know  more 
than  the  business  man  about  his  own  business. 


Judges  of  Business  131 

In  one  case  of  which  I  was  told  by  a  distin- 
guished member  of  ParHament,  a  labour  repre- 
sentative who  was  the  advocate  for  the  men 
before  the  court  in  a  dispute  between  the  tailors 
and  their  employers,  one  of  the  latter  declared 
solemnly  that  an  advance  of  five  per  cent,  in 
wages  would  ruin  him. 

My  informant  believes  that  in  making  this 
statement  the  employer  was  entirely  honest. 
The  decision  of  the  court  was  in  favour  of  the 
men,  and  the  advance  in  wages  given  was  con- 
siderably more  than  five  per  cent. 

Meeting  this  employer  some  time  afterwards, 
the  labour  member  asked  him  how  the  award 
had  affected  him. 

"I  believe,"  was  his  reply,  "it  will  work  out 
all  right.  We  have  reorganised  our  methods 
and  are  getting  along  first-rate." 

The  judges  frequently  take  occasion  to  make 
such  remarks  as  Judge  Edwards  addressed  to 
the  iron  moulders.  He  reminded  this  union 
that  "the  condition  of  the  trade  had  to  be  con- 
sidered, for  disaster  to  the  masters  would  mean 
disaster  to  the  workers." 

And  to  me,  Judge  Edwards,  in  speaking  of  a  de- 
cision which  he  had  rendered  in  the  boot  makers' 
case,  said  that  the  wages  had  been  fixed  by  the 
court  as  high  as  they  could  be,  but  that  they 
were  still  altogether  too  low.     But,  he  said,  the 


132     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

court  could  not  fix  the  wages  at  a  price  that 
would  ruin  the  industry. 

In  one  case  the  judge  refused  to  shorten  the 
hours  on  Saturday,  "because  that  would  cause 
inconvenience  to  other  trades." 

The  Arbitration  Law  as  administered  by  the 
judges  in  New  Zealand  aims  to  play  within  liv- 
ing limits  for  both  employers  and  employes. 

In  another  case  the  concession  asked  for  by 
the  employes  was  refused  by  the  court  because, 
the  judge  said,  it  would  be  "an  innovation." 

Since  the  act  has  gone  into  operation  at  a  time 
of  expanding  industry  and  rising  prices,  the  ap- 
plications of  the  men  for  higher  wages  have 
been  uniformly  granted,  at  least  in  part.  But 
the  court  has  shown  itself  quite  able  to  discrim- 
inate when  discrimination  was  called  for. 

The  Consolidated  Gold  Fields  Company  low- 
ered the  wages  of  its  men  from  los.  ($2.50)  to 
8s.  4d.  ($2.08)  a  day.  The  miners  held  a  meet- 
ing, discontinued  work  for  three  weeks,  and 
then  formed  themselves  into  a  union  and  re- 
ferred their  case  to  the  Conciliation  Board. 
Pending  its  decision,  they  resumed  their  work 
at  9s.  ($2.25)  a  day. 

The  case  went  on  up  to  the  Court  of  Arbitra- 
tion. The  judge  decided  that  the  reduction  of 
wages  had  been  premature,  but,  looking  to  the 
large  amount  of  money  that  was  being  spent  by 


Arbitration  and  Competition     133 

the  company  in  prospecting  and  opening  up  new 
ground,  these  being  non-paying  operations,  he 
ruled  that  the  miners  should  consent  to  take  a 
lower  wage  for  a  limited  period,  after  which 
they  should  be  permitted  to  open  the  whole  ques- 
tion. Their  wages  were  therefore  fixed  at  9s. 
6d.  ($2.37)  a  day  temporarily. 

It  has  been  the  aim  of  the  court  wherever 
possible  in  its  awards  to  make  conditions  uni- 
form for  all  parts  of  the  colony  for  all  the  mem- 
bers of  the  trade  before  it.  The  court  did  this 
in  the  painting  trade.  In  deciding  a  much  more 
difficult  case,  that  of  the  iron  moulders  of  Well- 
ington, the  court  said : 

'Mt  is  not  difficult  to  make  conditions  uniform 
in  such  a  trade  as  that  of  the  painters,  for  they 
are  not  in  competition  with  those  of  distant 
towns.  Increasing  the  wages  of  painters  and 
making  them  the  same  throughout  the  colony, 
does  not  mean  giving  an  advantage  to  a  painter 
in  Auckland  over  one  in  Invercargill.  In  towns 
where  the  wages  were  raised  to  the  level  ruling 
elsewhere,  it  means  only  that  the  person  for 
whom  the  business  was  done  had  to  pay  a  little 
more  for  it." 

But  the  firms  in  the  moulding  business,  in  the 
various  towns  of  the  colony,  are  in  sharp  compe- 
tition with  each  other.  In  fixing  wages  to  be 
paid  the  employes  of  the  iron  moulding  firms  of 


134      A  Country  Without  Strikes 

Wellington,  the  judge  said  the  court  ought  to  be 
very  careful  not  to  cause  an  interference  with 
trade,  and  drive  it  from  one  part  of  the  colony 
to  the  other,  a  possibility  disastrous  to  em- 
ployers and  employes  alike. 

The  decision  fixed  the  wages  of  the  Welling- 
ton iron  moulders  at  9s.  ($2.25)  a  day,  although 
the  same  class  of  employes  were  paid  ids. 
($2.50)  a  day  in  Dunedin,  and  living  and  rent 
were  cheaper  there  than  in  Wellington. 

It  was  no  doubt  a  great  misfortune,  the  court 
said,  that  they  could  not  take  into  consideration 
all  parts  of  the  colony  and  fix  a  wage  for  all — 
not  necessarily  the  same  wage,  but  one  that 
would  do  justice  to  the  workers,  while  not  in- 
flicting injustice  on  employers ;  but  all  they  could 
do  in  this  case  at  present  was  to  see  that,  while 
the  men  got  a  fair  living  wage,  the  masters  were 
not  injured. 

The  court  would  have  liked  to  see  the  Well- 
ington iron  moulders  paid  the  same  wages  as 
those  in  Dunedin,  the  judge  said,  but  it  was 
plain  they  ought  not  to  interfere  with  the  pres- 
ent conditions  as  to  the  rate  of  wages  which 
seemed  to  be  fair  wages  in  Wellington  for  men 
of  that  class.  They  made  the  award  operative 
for  a  year  only,  as  they  had  done  in  the  com- 
peting town  of  Christchurch  a  few  weeks  back. 
This  was  in  the  hope  that  during  the  year  they 
would  be  able  to  consider  the  conditions  of  the 


Afraid  of  the  Judges  135 

trade  and  their  effect  upon  workingmen  in  each 
branch  of  the  trade  throughout  the  colony,  and 
perhaps  make  an  arrangement  on  a  basis  which 
would  give  satisfaction  all  around. 

When  I  asked  the  workingmen  of  South  Aus- 
tralia why  practically  none  of  their  unions  had 
registered  under  the  Arbitration  Law  of  that 
colony,  the  reply  was  that  they  were  afraid  of 
some  of  their  judges.  The  large  number  of 
New  Zealand  unions  and  business  men's  associ- 
ations that  have  organised  to  qualify  themselves 
to  appear  before  the  Arbitration  Court  shows 
that  they  have  no  fear  of  that  kind. 

One  of  the  benefits  anticipated  from  the  act 
was  that  the  very  fact  that  such  a  law  was  on  the 
statute  books  would  render  appeals  to  it  un- 
necessary. This  has  proved  so.  When  both 
employers  and  employes  know  that  either  can 
summon  the  other  before  a  tribunal  which  has 
the  power  to  make  a  decision  between  them,  and 
to  enforce  it,  they  are  likely  to  think  twice  be- 
fore they  insist  on  unreasonable  demands.  They 
will  be  careful  about  running  the  risk  of  being 
involved  in  proceedings  which  will  cause  an  ex- 
pensive waste  of  time  and  money. 

This  news  paragraph  gives  a  significant  hint 
of  how  much  surer  is  the  footing  of  the  men 
when  they  ask  for  better  terms  with  an  Arbitra- 
tion Law  in  the  background  than  elsewhere : 

'At  a  meeting  of  the  employes  of  the  iron 


136     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

trade  in  Auckland,  a  number  of  masters  were 
also  present.  The  workers  demand  shorter 
hours,  better  wages,  and  the  regulation  of  ap- 
prentices. All  the  employers  are  to  be  invited 
to  consider  the  demands  before  application  is 
made  to  the  Conciliation  Board," 

Items  like  the  following  are  not  infrequent 
in  the  New  Zealand  newspapers. 

"The  furniture  workers  and  employers  have 
come  to  an  agreement  to  extend  the  present 
award  for  two  years." 

This  was  the  second  time  that  such  a  settle- 
ment had  been  made  in  this  trade,  and  similar 
occurrences  are  continually  taking  place.  These 
people  having  once  been  before  the  court  were  so 
well  satisfied  with  the  justice  and  reasonableness 
of  its  decisions,  that  they  renewed  it  voluntarily 
without  invoking  its  aid. 

I  was  in  Dunedin  when  an  even  pleasanter 
incident  brought  into  view  one  of  the  unex- 
pected uses  of  the  new  tribunal. 

The  printing  trade  there  as  everywhere  was 
being  revolutionised  by  a  typesetting  machine, 
and  the  typographical  union  had  sued  their  em- 
ployers, the  two  principal  dailies,  in  the  new 
court.  The  men's  case  had  to  be  thrown  out 
for  a  fatal  defect  in  their  procedure,  but,  having 
come  together,  neither  side  liked  the  idea  of 
separating  with  nothing  accomplished. 


Out  of  Court  1 37 

"Although  the  court  could  do  nothing  of- 
ficially, perhaps  it  would  have  no  objection  to 
see  if  it  could  do  something  unofficially?" 

No  sooner  said  than  done.  The  judge  was 
willing  and  an  informal  conference  was  held 
in  which  all  joined.  This  friendly  talk  led  to  a 
further  meeting  in  the  evening  of  a  more  de- 
liberate character.  This  was  attended  by  the 
judge,  the  other  members  of  the  court,  represen- 
tatives of  the  typographical  associations,  and  the 
employers.  Judge  Edwards  presided,  and  the 
Otago  Daily  Times  of  Dunedin  says  in  its  re- 
port, "gave  some  impartial  and  friendly  counsel 
to  the  parties  to  the  dispute,  urging  them  to 
settle  their  differences,  if  it  were  at  all  possible 
for  them  to  do  so.  Employers  and  men  ex- 
pressed their  appreciation  of  the  disinterested 
service  rendered,  in  an  unofficial  way  by  the 
president  of  the  court,  and  the  result,  after  a 
protracted  discussion,  was  the  arranging  of  a 
further  meeting  to  be  held  to-day,  which,  there 
is  some  reason  to  believe,  will  insure  a  settle- 
ment of  the  dispute." 

The  adjourned  meeting  was  held  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  the  representatives  of  the  newspapers 
and  the  printers  met,  with  full  powers  to  come 
to  an  agreement,  if  they  could.  After  a  short 
discussion,  an  agreement  was  arrived  at  on  the 
same  terms  as  had  been  agreed  to  in  Christ- 


138     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

church  and  Wellington,  and,  says  the  news- 
paper : 

"It  is  felt  that  this  amicable  settlement  is 
largely  due  to  the  kindly  intervention  of  the 
judge." 

The  employers  conceded  one  of  the  principal 
points  of  difference,  that  about  men  newly  put 
at  work  on  machines — probationers.  It  was 
agreed  that  they  should  be  paid  full  weekly 
wages  from  the  time  of  starting,  £3  6s.  ($16.50) 
for  night  work,  and  £3  ($15.00)  for  day  work 
of  seven  hours. 

A  sufficiently  dramatic  contrast  to  this  picture 
of  amicable  and  uncostly  compromise  can  be 
found  in  the  strike  which  occurred  a  year  or  two 
ago  in  Chicago,  in  which  all  the  daily  news- 
papers in  the  city  suspended  publication  for  sev- 
eral days. 

Nowhere  is  the  conservatism  of  the  people 
and  of  the  judges  who  have  the  Compulsory 
Arbitration  law  to  administer  better  shown 
than  in  dealing  with  that  part  of  the  law  which 
relates  to  penalties.  This  has  been  the  last 
chapter  in  the  development  of  the  administration 
of  the  law,  and  the  demonstration  of  the  ability 
and  determination  of  the  judges  to  enforce  pen- 
alties when  necessary,  has  given  the  crowning 
touch  to  the  stability  and  dignity  of  the  court. 

The  penalties  for  violation  of  an  award  were 


Enforcement  of  Penalties        139 

obviously  intended  by  the  law  as  first  passed  to 
be  fine  or  imprisonment,  or  both,  but,  through 
some  defect  in  the  drafting,  the  only  penalty 
which  could  be  enforced  was  imprisonment. 
Undoubtedly  the  fear  of  so  harsh  a  punishment 
had  its  influence  in  keeping  those  subject  to  the 
award  in  line,  but  the  workingmen  and  their 
friends  feared  that  some  case  of  obduracy  might 
one  day  occur  which  would  have  to  be  pun- 
ished, and  that  if  anything  so  severe  as  com- 
mittal to  jail  were  inflicted  for  the  breach  of  a 
law  so  novel,  there  might  be  a  revulsion  of 
public  opinion,  and  possibly  all  that  had  been 
achieved  might  be  overthrown. 

By  common  consent  the  law  was  so  amended 
that  fines  as  originally  contemplated  could  be 
levied  and  enforced.  That  done,  the  judges 
show  a  firm  hand  in  dealing  with  offenders. 

In  deciding  the  case  of  the  shoe  manufactur- 
ers outside  the  manufacturers'  association  which 
has  been  described  in  a  preceding  chapter,  the 
court  fined  them  the  sum  of  £5  ($25)  each,  to 
be  paid  to  the  union  of  their  men  as  reimburse- 
ment of  the  expense  to  which  they  had  been  put 
in  bringing  the  employers  before  the  court. 

In  another  case,  two  mining  companies, 
which  had  paid  their  men  only  8s.  6d.  ($2.12) 
a  day,  instead  of  los.  ($2.50)  a  day,  which  had 
been   awarded   by   the   court,    were   fined   £25 


140     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

($125.00)  each  and  ordered  to  pay  the  wages 
originally  fixed  by  the  court. 

A  master  plumber  was  brought  before  the 
Arbitration  Court  and  shown  to  have  been  guilty 
of  three  breaches  of  an  award  given  in  the  case 
between  him  and  his  employes.  He  had  not 
paid  the  wages  stipulated,  he  had  employed 
more  than  the  prescribed  number  of  assistants, 
and  he  had  neglected  to  supply  his  workingmen 
with  tools. 

The  court  took  a  serious  view  of  the  case.  It 
said  that  it  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  this 
employer  had  set  out  deliberately  to  disregard 
its  award ;  he  had  continued  to  do  so,  even  after 
his  men  had  remonstrated  with  him;  his  pay- 
ment of  less  wages  than  prescribed  was  wilful ; 
he  had  thus  been  able  to  enter  into  unfair  com- 
petition with  other  firms.  Unless  the  awards  of 
the  court  were  to  become  a  nullity,  it  said,  a 
substantial  fine  must  be  inflicted.  When  it 
could  be  proved  that  the  persons  evading  an 
award  reaped  pecuniary  advantage  thereby,  the 
penalty  must,  as  nearly  as  possible,  be  figured  to 
deprive  them  of  that  benefit. 

The  penalty  would  therefore  in  this  case,  the 
first  offence,  be  fixed  at  £20  ($100).  The  sec- 
ond breach  was  found  to  be  only  a  slight  one, 
and  a  penalty  of  5s.  ($1.25)  was  imposed  for 
that.     As  to  the  supply  of  tools,  the  court  found 


Cost  of  Disobedience  141 

that  the  journeymen  obtained  their  tools  only 
with  very  great  difficulty.  They  were  furnished 
obviously  in  such  a  way  as  to  drive  them  to  buy- 
ing tools  out  of  their  pockets  in  order  to  retain 
their  employment.  But  the  court,  in  view  of  the 
fines  already  enforced,  would  take  a  merciful 
view  of  this  breach,  it  said,  and  impose  a  penalty 
of  only  £1  ($5). 

But  the  guilty  man  was  also  amerced  in  the 
payment  of  £7  7s.  ($36.75)  costs,  which  he  had 
to  reimburse  to  the  union,  and  he  had  in  addition 
to  this  to  pay  the  witnesses'  expenses  and  the 
court  fees.  He  was  ordered  to  reimburse  the 
union  its  costs,  the  court  said,  because  the  hear- 
ing of  the  case  had  occupied  a  whole  day,  and 
the  defence  had  been  wholly  without  merit. 
Both  employers  and  workmen  must  understand, 
it  warned  them,  that  when  they  occupied  the 
time  of  the  judge  and  arbitrators  in  hearing  a 
frivolous  defence  or  a  frivolous  claim,  they 
would  have  to  bear  not  only  the  penalty,  but  the 
costs. 

A  baker,  who  began  work  earlier  than  the 
hour  set  by  the  court  to  govern  the  whole  trade, 
was  adjudged  to  have  been  guilty  "of  a  deliber- 
ate infringement,"  and  called  upon  to  pay  what 
the  judge  described  as  a  "moderate  penalty," 
£10  ($50),  besides  all  the  costs. 

But  when  another  baker  was  before  the  court. 


142     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

he  was  dealt  with  very  much  more  mercifully. 
He  was  shown  to  have  been  guilty  of  a  persist- 
ent breach  of  the  award,  in  beginning  work 
earlier  than  his  competitors.  But  the  bench 
would  not  inflict  a  very  heavy  fine,  it  said,  partly 
"because  he  did  not  appear  to  be  in  a  very  large 
way  of  business."  His  fine  was  therefore  made 
40s.  ($10),  but  he  was  also  compelled  to  pay  all 
the  costs  and  court  fees. 

Some  of  the  workingmen  in  their  applications 
for  the  infliction  of  penalty  showed  some  indi- 
cations of  a  vindictive  spirit  and  a  desire  to  get 
a  snap  judgment  on  their  employers,  but  the 
court  was  peremptory  in  rebuking  and  defeat- 
ing these  attempts. 

In  one  of  the  disputes  in  the  baking  trade,  the 
court  found  that  the  employer  had  been  un- 
doubtedly guilty  of  a  breach,  but  it  found  also 
that  the  union  had  not  begun  proceedings 
against  him  until  some  months  after  the  occur- 
rence, and  had  given  him  no  notice  whatever  of 
the  alleged  breach  of  the  award,  and  had  made 
no  request  of  him  for  any  explanation.  The 
court  thought  the  course  taken  by  the  union  sug- 
gested rather  an  undue  anxiety  to  get  a  case 
against  him  than  any  dread  of  oppression  on  his 
I^art.  It  declared  itself  satisfied  that,  if  the  em- 
ployer had  been  notified  that  the  wage  fixed  by 
the  award  must  be  paid,  or,  if  the  union  had 


No  Room  for  Vindictiveness    143 

requested  the  payment  of  the  amount,  there 
would  have  been  no  necessity  for  the  present 
proceedings.  However,  as  there  had  been  a 
breach  of  the  award,  it  felt  itself  bound  to  im- 
pose a  penalty,  for  it  was  the  duty  of  employers 
to  obey  the  provisions  of  the  award,  without 
any  request  by  their  workingmen. 

"Under  these  circumstances,  a  fine  of  20s. 
($5)  and  court  costs  will  be  sufficient  to  call  the 
attention  of  employers  to  the  necessity  of  a  strict 
observance  on  their  part  of  the  provisions  of  the 
award,  even  though  no  mention  of  such  provis- 
ions was  made  by  the  workingman,  and  even 
though  the  workingman  may  be  a  consenting 
party  to  the  breach." 

The  court  lectured  the  representatives  of  the 
union  severely  on  their  conduct  of  these  cases, 
and  told  them  that  where  they  had  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  any  employer  was  not  acting  up  to  the 
terms  of  an  award,  it  was  their  duty  before  tak- 
ing steps  to  make  him  a  party  to  quasi-criminal 
proceedings,  to  endeavour  to  come  to  some 
amicable  settlement  with  him.  If  the  unions  did 
not  do  this,  they  were  not  acting,  the  court  told 
them,  in  the  best  interests  of  unionism. 

Several  similar  cases  to  the  one  just  described 
have  been  brought  before  the  court,  and  it  has 
always  made  the  same  ruling.  Wherever  it 
finds  that  the  union  has  proceeded  against  an 


144     ^  Country  Without  Strikes 

employer  without  making  any  endeavour  to 
come  to  an  amicable  understanding  with  him, 
and  without  giving  him  any  notice  to  discon- 
tinue his  objectionable  practice,  and  with  no 
warning  that  he  was  to  be  taken  before  the 
court,  it  has  imposed  almost  nominal  penalties. 

The  employers  met  the  Arbitration  Act  at 
first  with  a  great  deal  of  resistance,  active  and 
passive.  They  refused  to  register  under  the  act, 
but  they  found  that  this  did  not  prevent  them 
from  being  called  into  court.  They  refused  to 
exercise  their  right  of  electing  representatives 
for  the  Conciliation  Boards  and  Courts  of  Arbi- 
tration. The  government  thereupon  exercised 
its  right  to  make  elections  for  them.  They  re- 
fused to  appear  before  the  court.  Their  cases 
then  went  by  default. 

One  of  the  members  of  Parliament,  who  was 
also  a  member  of  one  of  the  Conciliation  Boards, 
told  me  of  a  case  in  which  a  large  corporation, 
when  summoned  before  the  court,  began  pro- 
ceedings by  dictating  as  to  the  methods  of  pro- 
cedure to  be  followed.  When  they  found  that 
they  could  not  have  their  own  way,  they  declared 
that  they  would  withdraw.  They  were  there- 
upon told  that  they  could  do  so,  if  they  chose, 
but  that  if  they  did,  they  would  be  in  the  same 
position  as  any  other  party  before  a  court — 
judgment  would  go  against  them  by  default  on 


One  Fruit  of  Publicity  145 

all  points.     They  then  decided  to  remain  and 
fight  it  out.     They  did  so,  and  lost. 

In  this  case,  notice  was  given  to  the  company 
that  they  must  produce  either  their  books  or  a 
sworn  statement  of  certain  particulars  as  to  their 
business,  which  were  needed  to  decide  between 
them  and  their  men.  This  ended  the  proceed- 
ings. To  save  themselves  the  production  of 
their  books,  they  at  once  came  to  an  agreement 
with  their  men.  They  have  since  renewed  this 
agreement  without  the  intervention  of  the  court. 

One  of  the  important  gold-mining  companies 
in  New  Zealand  sought  to  escape  the  Court  of 
Arbitration  when  summoned  by  its  men  by 
pleading  that  it  was  not  subject  to  the  jurisdic-^ 
tion  of  the  court. 

"Our  company  is  registered  in  Britain  and  is 
not  resident  in  New  Zealand,"  the  manager  said. 

But  the  chairman  put  this  argument  aside. 
"Any  one  who  is  an  employer  in  New  Zealand 
can  be  made  a  party  to  these  proceedings." 

Some  of  the  employers  complained  to  me  that- 
they  were  compelled  to  go  into  court  on  trivial 
grounds,  and  that  their  time  and  that  of  the 
court  and  the  public  money  was  thus  wasted, 
and  the  author  of  the  law,  in  his  book  on  New 
Zealand,  "The  Long  White  Cloud,"  warns  the 
trade-unions  that  they  have  shown  a  tendency 
to  make  too  frequent  a  use  of  it. 


146     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

The  court  has  the  power  to  dismiss  trivial  or 
frivolous  cases  and  to  put  the  costs  on  the  of- 
fender. Representatives  of  the  masters  are 
members  both  of  the  Boards  of  Conciliation  and 
the  Court  of  Arbitration,  and  the  masters  them- 
selves appear  before  them  and  can  point  out  any 
instances  of  such  litigation. 

"We  must  deal  with  human  nature  as  it  is," 
one  of  the  labour  members  said  to  me  in  dis- 
cussing this  objection.  ''Which  is  better,  to 
leave  the  fools  and  mischief-makers  to  bring  on 
strikes,  or  to  bring  on  arbitration?  Agitators 
foment  disturbances  to  bring  the  masters  before 
the  court.  It  is  suspected  sometimes  that  even 
members  of  the  Conciliation  Board,  who  are 
paid  for  the  number  of  days  they  sit,  do  the  same 
thing.  But  which  is  worse,  that  agitators 
should  foment  arbitration,  or  foment  strikes?" 

Another  objection  often  made  is,  that  in  con- 
sequence of  the  law,  industry  is  disturbed  by 
the  frequency  of  disputes;  but  when  I  looked 
into  the  number  of  cases  before  the  court,  I 
found  that  there  had  only  been  about  fifty  in 
five  years,  about  one  case  a  month. 

This,  too,  it  is  only  fair  to  remember,  is  the 
number  of  disputes  at  the  beginning  of  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  law.  Every  decision  that 
settles  questions  makes  precedents  that  will  pre- 
vent other  disputes  from  being  brought  forward. 


Two  Cases  in  Four  Years       147 

This  point  about  the  disturbance  of  industry 
was  well  met  by  Mr.  Reeves  in  one  of  his  letters 
to  the  London  Times,  in  the  controversy 
already  mentioned.  An  Auckland  paper  had 
been  quoted  as  authority  for  the  complaint  that 
the  act  kept  the  colony  in  a  state  of  seething  in- 
dustrial ferment.  Auckland,  as  Mr.  Reeves 
pointed  out  in  his  reply,  is  a  large  and  flourish- 
ing district,  comprising  about  a  fifth  of  New 
Zealand : 

"But  how  many  disputes  were  there  in  the 
Auckland  district  during  the  four  years  after  the 
passing  of  the  act,  that  is,  from  October,  1894, 
to  October,  1898?  Two!  Two  cases  in  four 
years !" 

When  the  amending  act  of  1898  was  before 
the  Labour  Bills'  Committee  of  Parliament,  the 
only  appearance  against  the  bill  was  made  by  a 
business  man  who  was  an  active  leader  in  organ- 
ising associations  of  employers  for  the  purpose 
of  protecting  their  interests  in  labour  legislation 
and  similar  matters.  He  is  the  president  of  one 
of  these  associations  called  the  Industrial  Cor- 
poration of  New  Zealand. 

I  got  from  him  an  interesting  account  of  the 
methods  pursued  by  his  association  in  the  Mari- 
time Strike  of  1890.  When  the  men,  seeing 
that  they  were  beaten,  appealed  to  the  govern- 
ment to  intercede  with  the  employers  to  meet 


148     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

them,  the  government  communicated  with  this 
association,  the  Industrial  Corporation.  Its 
President,  my  informant,  wired  to  all  the 
other  employers'  associations  in  the  country 
the  answer  they  should  make.  This  was  in 
substance  uniform,  to  wit:  That  they  were  sat- 
isfied with  things  as  they  were.  The  wording 
was  varied  so  as  not  to  make  it  seem  that  they 
were  all  acting  in  concert,  but  the  substance  was 
the  same.     The  men  were  defeated. 

As  a  representative  of  this  Industrial  Corpor- 
ation this  gentleman  appeared  before  the  Labour 
Bills'  Committee,  and  his  statement  is  printed  in 
its  report  among  the  parliamentary  papers. 
His  main  points  were :  That  the  law  was  unjust 
to  the  masters,  because,  while  they  had  property 
and  could  pay  any  penalty  imposed,  fines  could 
not  be  enforced  against  the  trade-unions  since 
they  had  nothing.  That  the  workingmen  could 
have  the  law  enforced  against  the  employer,  but 
he,  in  his  turn,  had  no  remedy  against  the  em- 
ployes, if  they  chose  to  disobey  the  award.  That 
you  cannot  compel  men,  labourers  or  capitalists, 
to  work  by  act  of  Parliament.  That  the  em- 
ployers of  New  Zealand  had  to  compete  with 
employers  in  other  countries,  with  Argentina, 
for  example,  in  the  export  of  meat  to  England, 
where  there  were  no  arbitration  laws  to  ham- 
per their  rivals.     That  the  experience  of  Eng- 


"These  Infernal  Bills"  149 

land  proved  that  conciliation,  not  arbitration, 
was  to  be  the  potent  factor  in  settling  trade  dis- 
putes in  the  future.  Finally,  that  New  Zea- 
land prosperity  was  declining;  the  poor  were 
poorer;  there  were  £5,000,000  sterling  ($25,- 
000,000)  lying  idle  in  the  banks;  capital  refused 
to  embark  in  new  enterprises.  "In  my  opinion," 
he  concluded,  ''the  unwise  measures  passed  by 
the  New  Zealand  Parliament  are  entirely  re- 
sponsible for  this."  "These  infernal  bills,"  he 
called  the  Arbitration  Acts. 

The  labour  men  whom  I  questioned  as  to 
whether  it  was  true  that  the  awards  could  not 
be  enforced  against  workingmen  made  replies 
that  seemed  conclusive.  A  very  large  propor- 
tion of  the  trade-unionists  in  New  Zealand  own 
their  own  homes,  a  larger  proportion,  perhaps, 
than  in  any  other  country.  A  penalty  of  £10 
($50)  could  certainly  be  collected  from  such 
men.  As  to  the  argument  that  the  provision 
for  penalties  was  useless  because  no  employer 
would  be  so  cruel  as  to  attempt  to  have  $50 
fines  levied  on  recalcitrant  workmen,  the  men 
laughed  at  this  assumption  of  soft-heartedness 
and  pointed  to  the  conduct  of  the  employers  in 
New  South  Wales  in  sending  the  leaders  of 
strikes  there  to  jail  for  years.  Trade-unions 
have  the  power  of  collecting  dues  from  their 
members,  which  would  easily  realise  the  maxi- 


150     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

mum  penalty  of  £500  ($2,500),  that  can  be 
levied.  The  boot  makers  spent  £6,000  ($30- 
000)  on  one  strike  before  the  days  of  arbitra- 
tion. 

Besides,  as  one  of  the  members  of  Parliament 
said,  the  workingman  who  sets  out  to  disobey  an 
award,  will  not  only  have  to  leave  town,  he  will 
have  to  leave  the  district,  for  the  award  covers 
the  whole  of  a  district.  He  will  often  have  to 
leave  the  colony,  for  many  of  the  awards  are 
made  to  apply  to  the  country  at  large. 

The  same  point  applies  to  the  manufacturer. 
The  court,  in  making  its  decision,  considers  not 
only  the  conditions  of  the  individual  manufac- 
turer, but  those  of  the  whole  trade  in  the  dis- 
trict, and,  whenever  possible,  those  of  the  whole 
colony. 

To  the  suggestion  that  men  in  collusion  with 
the  trade-union  officials  might  quit  work,  but 
receive  sick  pay,  or  strike  pay,  the  answer  was 
made  that  many  of  the  trade-unions  had  no  sick 
funds,  and  as  for  strike  pay  they  could  not  get 
that.  Every  cent  of  expenditure  by  a  trade- 
union  has  to  be  reported  to  the  registrar  of  the 
friendly  societies.  No  expenditure  is  legal  that 
is  not  allowed  by  the  rules  of  the  society  as 
registered.  For  any  illegal  expenditures,  every 
officer  of  the  union  is  personally  liable. 

One  change  which  the  Industrial  Corporation 


Independence  of  the  Court      1 5  i 

sought  to  have  made  in  the  law  it  obtained. 
This  was  that  the  words  in  the  title  "to  encour- 
age the  formation  of  industrial  unions  and  asso- 
ciations" should  be  stricken  out.  They  wanted 
these  eliminated  to  remove  one  ground  on  which 
the  judges  had  given  preference  to  trade-unions. 
They  succeeded  in  getting  the  change  made,  but 
it  has  not  produced  any  effect  upon  the  decisions 
by  the  judges.  The  latest  news  in  January, 
1900,  is  that  this  association  and  other  organisa- 
tions of  employers  are  to  take  this  sore  point  to 
the  Supreme  Court  to  obtain  a  decision  forbid- 
ding the  Arbitration  Court  to  continue  its  pref- 
erence to  trade-unionists.  The  friends  of 
arbitration  hope  this  appeal  to  the  Supreme 
Court  to  interfere,  will  be  ineffectual  in  view  of 
the  explicit  language  of  the  act  already  referred 
to,  making  the  Arbitration  Court  independent  of 
the  other  courts:  "No  award  or  proceeding  of 
the  Court  shall  be  liable  to  be  challenged,  ap- 
pealed against,  reviewed,  quashed,  or  called  in 
question  by  any  Court  of  Judicature  on  any  ac- 
count whatsoever." 


CHAPTER    VI. 

WHAT   IT    COSTS   AND   WHAT   IT    PAYS, 

The  total  cost  of  the  administration  of  the 
Arbitration  and  ConciHation  Act  during-  1898-9 
was  £1,359  ($6,795).  Of  this  the  Arbitration 
Court  was  responsible  for  £656  ($3,280),  the 
Conciliation  Board  £734  ($3,670),  and  the 
legal  expenses  were  £12  ($60).  The  total  cost 
to  November  i,  1899 — four  years — has  been 
£4,400  ($22,000). 

What  did  the  country  get  for  this  expen- 
diture? 

The  only  country  in  the  world  where  for  four 
years  there  have  been  no  strikes  or  lockouts,  is 
the  only  country  where  there  is  a  compulsory 
arbitration  law,  New  Zealand,  and  New  Zealand 
is  to-day  more  prosperous  than  it  ever  has  been 
before,  and  is,  as  far  as  my  observation  goes, 
the  most  prosperous  country  in  the  world. 

The  Otago  Daily  Times,  the  leading  oppo- 
sition paper  in  the  colony,  said  last  year : 

IS2 


An  Official  Opinion  153 

"It  cannot  be  even  plausibly  urged  that  the 
effect  of  the  Conciliation  and  Arbitration  Act 
has  so  far  been  injurious  or  damaging." 

The  Wellington  Times  says : 

"The  result  has  been  a  great  spread  of  indus- 
trial peace." 

In  the  report  recently  submitted  to  the  Vic- 
torian government  by  the  Honourable  R.  W. 
Best,  its  Minister  for  Lands,  of  a  tour  of  inves- 
tigation made  by  him  in  New  Zealand  to  study 
its  land  and  labour  laws,  he  quotes  the  following 
to  show  how  some  of  the  principal  employers 
regard  the  act: 

"Speaking  at  a  special  meeting  of  the  Dunedin 
Chamber  of  Commerce,  on  October  19,  1897,  to 
consider  certain  bills  then  before  Parliament, 
Mr,  James  Mills,  Managing  Director  of  the 
Union  Steamship  Company,  and  one  of  the 
largest  employers  of  labour  in  New  Zealand,  is 
reported  by  the  Otago  Daily  Times  to  have 
said  that  'personally  he  thought  the  Conciliation 
and  Arbitration  Act  was  a  very  beneficial  one 
and  one  of  the  most  important  that  had  been 
passed,  and  he  felt  that  they  were  under  a  debt 
of  gratitude  to  the  present  government  and  Mr. 
Reeves  for  maturing  the  bill  in  its  present  shape. 
Probably  the  measure  was  capable  of  improve- 
ment, and  it  would  be  improved  from  time  to 
time,  but  he  was  sure  that  compulsory  arbitra- 


154     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

tion  was  the  true  solution  of  all  labour  difficul- 
ties.' " 

In  an  address  by  the  Right  Honourable 
Richard  J.  Seddon,  the  Premier  of  New  Zea- 
land, at  a  representative  gathering  of  London 
capitalists  interested  in  the  mining  industry,  one 
of  the  strongest  points  which  the  Premier  made 
to  encourage  the  investment  of  English  capital 
in  New  Zealand  mines,  was  the  stability  given 
to  business  enterprise  by  the  Arbitration  Law. 

"With  us,"  he  said,  "a  strike  of  the  miners  is 
impossible,  as  it  is  also  impossible  for  the  owner 
of  the  mine  to  shut  down.  That  is  a  condition 
of  things  which  does  not  prevail  anywhere  else. 
There  is  a  safeguard  for  you.  The  result  has 
been  this,  that  even  the  employers,  who  were  the 
first  to  object  to  that  legislation,  are  to-day  the 
strongest  in  favour  of  it,  because  where  they 
have  strikes  of  any  kind  where  there  is  a  large 
amount  of  capital  invested,  the  effect  of  that 
capital  being  laid  up  for  weeks,  and  exactions 
being  demanded  which  that  capital  could  not 
bear,  would  be  as  disastrous  as  it  would  be  to 
our  mining.  The  law,  as  it  stands  now,  has 
prevented  disputes,  which,  if  there  had  been  an 
industrial  struggle,  must  have  meant  a  loss  of 
about  a  million  of  money  to  us  as  a  small  com- 
munity, whereas,  the  whole  cost  of  the  proceed- 
ings, and  the  whole  thing  summed  up,  would  not 
amount  to  £i,ooo." 


When  Wages  Fall  155 

There  is  a  growing  tendency  in  the  later 
cases  towards  the  admission  of  lawyers,  and  to 
a  narrower  interpretation  of  its  powers  by  the 
court  itself. 

Besides  the  grocers,  the  court  has  in  1900 
excluded  street-car  men  and  livery  stable  em- 
ployes as  not  engaged  in  "industrial"  pursuits. 

The  drift  of  the  reasoning  of  the  court  ap- 
pears to  be  that  no  occupations  are  "industrial" 
except  manufacturing. 

The  workingmen  have  appealed  to  govern- 
ment to  introduce  legislation  as  soon  as  Parlia- 
ment opens  to  safe-guard  the  act  from  such 
hostile  interpretation. 

This  reasoning  of  the  court  would  also  ex- 
clude seamen;  and  yet  the  act  was  expressly 
passed  to  make  a  recurrence  of  the  disastrous 
Maritime  Strike  of  1890  impossible. 

Common-sense,  the  New  Zealand  critics  of 
these  decisions  say,  would  seem  to  insist  that 
where  strikes  are,  there  is  the  field  of  the  law. 

The  stability  which  arbitration  gives  to  busi- 
ness contracts  in  New  Zealand  is  unknown,  as 
its  Premier  said,  to  any  other  business  men  in 
the  world.  After  an  award,  the  New  Zealand 
business  man  can  make  his  contracts  for  one  or 
two  years  ahead,  with  no  fear  of  any  "labour 
troubles." 

The  law  is,  as  one  of  the  labour  members  in 
the  Upper  House  admitted,  a  two-edged  sword. 


156     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

It  has  been  cutting  in  favour  of  the  workingmen 
in  the  present  rising  market ;  it  will  cut  in  favour 
of  the  employers  in  the  falling  market  which 
must  come. 

One  of  the  most  successful  employers  and 
capitalists  in  the  country  described  to  me  the 
situation  of  the  employer  under  compulsory  ar- 
bitration as  one  of  "perfect  comfort." 

"Under  the  old  system,"  he  said,  "our  differ- 
ences with  our  men  had  to  be  settled  by  a  brutal 
fight.  Now  two  committees  meet  before  the 
court,  and  meanwhile  the  industry  goes  on  just 
as  if  nothing  were  the  matter." 

He  quoted  to  me  the  manager  of  one  of  the 
largest  coal  companies  in  the  colony  as  declaring 
to  him  that,  although  he  had  always  been  op- 
posed to  the  present  ministry,  he  had  to  admit 
that  this  law  was  a  magnificent  thing  for  any 
statesman  to  have  done  for  his  country. 

"We  know  now  just  what  to  count  on,"  he 
said. 

This  testimony  added  to  that  just  given  from 
one  of  the  largest  steamship  companies,  and  the 
attitude  of  the  majority  of  the  manufacturers  in 
the  shoe  trade,  furniture  trade,  and  the  clothing 
trade — among  the  most  important  industries  of 
New  Zealand — show  how  favourable  the  most 
influential  manufacturers  of  New  Zealand  are 
to  compulsory  arbitration. 


Compulsion  Means  Peace       157 

I  heard  of  no  case  in  which  an  employer  had 
been  crippled,  or  an  industry  hurt,  by  an  award. 
That  there  have  been  no  "intolerable"  decisions 
may  be  fairly  inferred  from  the  fact  that  all  the 
awards  have  been  obeyed,  and  that  in  only  a 
very  few  cases  have  penalties  had  to  be  laid,  and 
these  have  always  sufficed  to  end  the  trouble. 

When  the  Arbitration  law  was  before  Parlia- 
ment, one  of  the  leaders  of  the  opposition  pre- 
dicted that  "it  would  cause  disturbances  in  our 
industrial  world  which  it  would  be  powerless  to 
control." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  number  of  disturb- 
ances which  have  occurred  have  been  limited  to 
a  little  less  than  one  a  month,  and  the  "disturb- 
ances" have  only  been  debates  before  the  court.' 
Five  years  of  complete  peace  is  worth  some- 
thing. 

The  London  Times  and  its  correspondent, 
*'R,"  united  in  the  declaration  "that  a  compul- 
sory arbitration  court  has  no  more  power  to 
prevent  industrial  war  than  an  arbitrator  mutu- 
ally chosen  under  the  English  system." 

Under  the  New  Zealand  system  industrial 
war  has  ceased.  Under  the  English  system  it 
continues  unabated. 

The  opinion  of  the  working  people  is  pro- 
nounced in  favour  of  the  law.  Nearly  every 
trade-union  in  the  colony  has  registered,  and 


158     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

many  trades  that  were  unorganised  have  formed 
themselves  into  unions  to  secure  its  benefits. 

At  a  recent  conference  of  representatives  of 
the  trade  and  labour  bodies  of  the  colony  held  in 
Christchurch,  April,  1899,  every  proposal  for  an 
amendment  of  the  Arbitration  Act  was  voted 
down,  except  one  in  favour  of  having  the  em- 
ployes of  the  government  admitted  to  its 
benefits. 

More  conclusive  even  than  the  opinions  of 
leading  business  men  and  trade-union  conven- 
tions, and  the  principal  journals  of  the  colony, 
and  more  representative  of  the  opinion  of  the 
community  as  a  whole,  is  the  attitude  which 
Parliament  has  come  to  take  with  regard  to  the 
Compulsory  Arbitration  law.  It  has  already 
been  told  how  the  fierce  opposition  with  which 
the  first  project  of  the  law  was  met  in  1892,  had 
most  of  it  disappeared  as  the  result  of  three 
years'  consideration  when  the  bill  came  to  be 
passed  in  1894,  and  how  the  bill  received  the 
support  of  the  leaders  of  the  opposition. 

The  operation  of  the  law  has  brought  it  into 
increasing  favour.  The  act  was  amended  in 
1896,  and  again  in  1898,  and  the  records  of  Par- 
liament show  that  in  both  cases  the  amending 
acts  went  through  without  material  opposition, 
or  hostile  debate. 

The  amending  act  of  1898  was  an  especially 


Parliament  Almost  Unanimous  159 

important  one,  and  one  which  should  have 
aroused  whatever  latent  opposition  there  may- 
have  been,  for  its  purpose  was  to  effectuate  the 
"compulsion"  by  making  the  provisions  for 
penalties  in  case  of  disobedience  enforceable. 
By  this  time,  1898,  the  act  had  been  in  active 
operation  for  over  two  years.  If  there  had  been 
any  deep  feeling  against  the  law,  if  real  harm 
was  being  done  to  business,  if  any  poignant 
pain  was  being  caused  to  the  lovers  of  "liberty" 
and  "freedom  of  contract,"  it  should  certainly 
have  found  expression  at  that  opportunity.  But 
there  was  none.  Mr.  Reeves  described  what 
happened  in  one  of  his  letters  to  the  London 
Times,  in  December,  1898: 

"Only  last  month  a  friendly  amending  act, 
meant  to  clear  up  and  emphasise  certain  sections 
of  the  act,  and  cure  a  legal  flaw  supposed  to  have 
been  found  in  it,  was  passed  through  the  House 
of  Representatives  absolutely  without  any  kind 
of  opposition;  yet  the  session  was,  perhaps,  the 
stormiest  and  most  contentious  held  in  the 
colony  in  recent  years.  This  act,  somewhat 
modified,  passed  the  Upper  House.  No  other 
government  labour  bill  did." 

The  prosperity  of  the  country  is  incontestable. 
Every  year,  since  1894,  manufactures  and  all 
industries  have  been  increasing.  The  statistics 
of  deposits  in  the  banks,  of  the  receipts  through 


1 60      A  Country  Without  Strikes 

the  custom-houses,  of  the  accumulation  of 
wealth,  the  business  of  the  railroads,  the  settle- 
ment of  land  and  the  growth  of  population,  the 
transactions  of  the  post-office,  have  all  revealed 
a  steady  improvement.  Capital  has  not  fled  the 
country,  but  is  glad  to  remain  among  the  wing- 
less birds  for  which  New  Zealand  is  famous. 
Nearly  every  New  Zealand  newspaper  reports 
some  new  enterprise  undertaken  by  capital,  do- 
mestic or  foreign.  Friends  of  the  law  did  not 
claim  to  me  that  it  had  caused  this  prosperity, 
but  they  pointed  out  that  it  completely  disproved 
the  predictions  that  ruin  would  follow  it. 

"Arbitration  without  compulsion  is  a  sham," 
was  the  conclusion  which  Mr.  Reeves  drew  from 
the  studies  which  he  had  made  of  the  experi- 
ments of  other  countries,  in  presenting  his  bill 
to  Parliament. 

The  same  conclusion  is  reached  in  an  interest- 
ing tract  on  "State  Arbitration  and  the  Living 
Wage,"  issued  by  the  Fabian  Society  of  Eng- 
land, which  I  found  being  widely  read  in  New 
Zealand. 

"Voluntary  arbitration,"  it  says,  "can  be 
summed  up  as  a  universal  failure." 

A  very  remarkable  illustration  of  this  is  fur- 
nished by  the  condition  of  things  in  Denmark  at 
this  writing.  To  break  up  the  building  trades' 
organisations,  the  masters  and  builders  locked 
out  forty  thousand  men, -one  half  of  the  working 


Conciliation  Fails  i6i 

population  of  Denmark — as  many  for  Denmark 
as  five  millions  would  have  been  in  Great  Brit- 
ain. The  majority  of  the  press,  many  of  the 
clergymen  and  leading  citizens  have  sided  with 
the  men.  Public  opinion  was  overwhelmingly 
on  their  side. 

There  is  in  Denmark  an  industrial  arbitration 
court.  It  was  established  at  the  suggestion  of 
the  employers,  with  the  consent  of  the  trade- 
unions.  Its  judgment  was  invoked  in  this 
crisis,  and  its  decision  was  for  the  men  and 
against  the  masters.  But  it  has  no  power  to 
enforce  its  award,  and  the  masters  have  treated 
its  decision  with  complete  contempt. 

The  paper  of  the  Fabian  Society  gives  the 
latest  information  as  to  the  results  obtained  by 
various  forms  of  private  arbitration  and  gov- 
ernment voluntary  arbitration  in  different 
countries. 

Boards,  like  the  Durham  Joint  Committee  in 
England,  for  the  coal  trade,  have  been  success- 
ful in  settling  a  number  of  cases,  but  such  in- 
strumentalities exist  only  in  a  few  well  organised 
trades,  and  even  there  they  do  not  settle  the 
worst  disputes. 

There  had  been  in  Great  Britain  up  to  the  end 
of  June,  1897,  ^^^'^^  hundred  strikes,  which  the 
government  conciliation  act  had  failed  to  pre- 
vent or  terminate. 

In   Germany  there  were   four   hundred   and 


1 62     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

eighty- three  strikes  in  the  year  1896,  which  the 
Industrial  Court  had  no  power  to  prevent.  It 
decided  twenty  cases,  and  its  award  was  rejected 
in  eleven  others. 

The  Conseils  des  Prud'hommes  in  France  has 
no  power  to  deal  with  strikes,  nor  with  disputes 
involving  more  than  $100.  Under  the  law  of 
1892,  in  France,  which  gives  powers  of  concili- 
ation to  the  Juge  de  Paix,  there  were,  in  the  fol- 
lowing four  years,  one  thousand  nine  hundred 
and  six  disputes,  of  which  only  9.28  per  cent., 
less  than  one  in  ten,  were  settled  successfully. 
The  employers  refused  mediation  in  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty  nine  cases. 

The  Massachusetts  State  Board  of  Arbitra- 
tion, in  1896,  settled  sixteen  out  of  twenty-nine 
cases.  The  New  York  State  Board  was  able,  in 
1896,  to  settle  two  per  cent,  of  the  two  hundred 
and  forty-six  disputes  which  occurred  in  that 
state. 

At  this  writing  a  new  strike  bill  is  pending  in 
the  German  Parliament.  To  contemplate  its 
provisions  is  like  passing  from  the  mountain  air 
of  New  Zealand  into  the  torture  chamber  of 
some  mediaeval  castle  on  the  Rhine. 

The  bill  provides  that  any  one  who  attempts 
by  physical  force,  threats,  defamation,  or  boy- 
cott to  induce  employers  or  employed  to  join  or 
not  to  join  imions,  or  become  parties  to  agree- 


A  Penitentiary  Bill  163 

ments,  the  object  of  which  is  to  influence  the 
conditions  of  labour  or  wages,  shall  be  liable  to 
imprisonment  not  exceeding  one  year,  or,  in  case 
of  extenuating  circumstances,  to  a  fine  not  ex- 
ceeding £50  ($250). 

Should  a  strike  or  lockout  be  forcibly  brought 
on,  or  life,  or  property,  or  the  security  of  the 
state  jeopardised,  the  penalty  shall  be  three 
years  hard  labour,  except  in  the  case  of  ring 
leaders,  for  whom  the  maximum  penalty  shall 
be  five  years. 

No  wonder  the  bill  was  at  once  nicknamed 
the  Penitentiary  Bill, 

Perhaps  on  the  whole  the  most  notable  ex- 
pression of  New  Zealand  public  opinion  with 
regard  to  its  Compulsory  Arbitration  law  was 
made  by  Judge  Williams  of  that  colony,  in  a 
letter  which  he  wrote — he  was  tjien  in  London 
— to  the  London  Times,  as  a  contribution  to 
the  controversy  then  going  on  in  its  columns. 
Judge  Williams  had  been  presiding  judge  of  the 
Court  of  Arbitration.  He  was  not  an  elective 
judge,  nor  a  re-elective  judge,  which  is  still 
worse,  and  had  no  occasion  to  bid  for  votes  even 
had  he  been  capable  of  doing  so.  He  was  no 
longer  at  the  head  of  the  Arbitration  Court.  He 
belongs,  politically  and  socially,  to  the  class 
which  would  be  by  inheritance  and  acquirement 
least  likely  to  be  sympathetic  with  any  form  of 


164     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

labour  legislation.  There  could  be  no  more  dis- 
interested, no  more  intelligent  testimony  than 
his.  His  letter  was  widely  reprinted  by  the  press 
of  the  colony,  and  long  as  it  is,  it  is  reproduced 
here  as  a  valuable  contribution  to  the  literature 
of  this  important  question. 

"May  I  add  a  word  to  the  discussion  which  is 
taking  place  in  your  columns  on  the  New  Zea- 
land Industrial  Arbitration  Act  ? 

"I  was  President  of  the  Industrial  Arbitration 
Court  from  the  time  the  act  was  brought  into 
operation  until  April  last,  1898,  and  have  had 
some  experience  of  its  working.  With  the  in- 
troduction or  the  framing  of  the  act  I  had  noth- 
ing to  do.  The  act  is,  of  course,  imperfect.  Any 
act  dealing  with  an  entirely  new  and  difficult 
subject  must  necessarily  be  imperfect.  The 
statutory  law  of  bankruptcy,  as  it  now  exists, 
did  not  spring  heaven-born  from  a  single  brain, 
but  has  attained  its  present  state  of  perfection, 
or  imperfection,  only  after  years  of  experience 
and  infinite  emendation.  I  have  no  doubt  also 
that  mistakes  have  been  made  in  the  administra- 
tion of  the  act.  Those  who  are  set  to  perform  a 
novel  and  delicate  experiment,  however  careful 
they  may  be,  not  infrequently  burn  their  own 
and  other  people's  fingers. 

"That  compulsory  arbitration  in  New  Zea- 


No  Suggestion  of  Repeal        165 

land  is  still  in  the  experimental  stage  must  be 
conceded ;  but  there  are,  I  venture  to  think,  good 
grounds  for  hoping  that  the  experiment  will  be 
ultimately  successful.  It  is  certainly  not  time 
to  say  that  the  experiment  is  a  failure. 

"When  we  find  that  a  number  of  cases  have 
been  dealt  with  under  the  act,  and  that  since  the 
act  has  been  in  operation  strikes  and  lockouts 
have  practically  ceased,  it  is  difficult  to  say  that 
there  is  no  promise  of  good.  That  those  who 
know  where  the  shoe  pinches  are  content  to  wear 
it  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  no  political  party 
suggests  the  repeal  of  the  act,  but  that  both 
parties  in  the  last  session  of  Parliament  gave 
their  best  efforts  to  amending  it. 

"Opinions,  of  course,  differ;  but  it  will  be 
found  that  the  vast  majority  of  the  newspapers 
in  the  colony  are  favourable  to  the  act,  and  that 
Parliament,  in  retaining  the  act  on  the  statute 
book,  and  striving  to  make  it  more  efficient, 
faithfully  represented  the  trend  of  public  opin- 
ion. 

"One  good  thing  the  act  does  is  to  prevent 
bitter  feeling  arising.  The  moment  there  is  a 
difference,  the  intervention  of  the  Conciliation 
Board  is  invoked,  and,  instead  of  quarrelling 
among  themselves  and  making  a  settlement 
every  day  more  difficult,  each  lays  his  case  be- 
fore a  third  party. 


1 66     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

"Unless  you  interfere  the  moment  a  differ- 
ence arises,  you  must  wait  till  both  parties  are 
sick  of  fighting.  The  futility  of  interference  in 
the  middle  of  a  quarrel  is  explained  by  Rabelais 
in  one  of  his  cleanest  and  most  amusing  chap- 
ters. In  nearly  every  case  that  came  before  the 
court  I  was  struck  with  the  good  temper  dis- 
played by  all  parties. 

"Another  benefit  of  the  act  is  that  the  hearing 
of  the  case  before  the  Conciliation  Board  and 
before  the  court  enables  the  public  to  form  an 
intelligent  opinion  upon  the  merits.  If  public 
opinion  supported  the  judgment  of  the  court,  it 
would  be  difficult  for  either  side,  apart  alto- 
gether from  the  question  of  compulsion,  to  act 
in  defiance  of  public  opinion. 

"No  doubt  the  difficulty  of  the  act  lies  in  the 
clauses  which  impose  a  penalty  for  a  breach  of 
the  award.  It  has  been  justly  said  that  you 
cannot  compel  a  workman  to  work  or  an  em- 
ployer to  carry  on  his  business  under  conditions 
which  are  intolerable  to  either,  *But  the  duty  of 
the  Arbitration  Court  is  to  pronounce  such  an 
award  as  will  enable  the  particular  trade  to  be 
carried  on,  and  not  to  impose  such  conditions  as 
would  make  it  better  for  the  employer  to  close 
his  works  or  for  the  workmen  to  cease  working 
than  to  conform  to  them.  The  object  of  the  act 
is  to  secure  industrial  peace,  and  not  to  create 
industrial  strife. 


A  Successful  Experiment        167 

"I  suppose  that  at  present  every  employer  in 
the  Kingdom  is  working  under  some  conditions 
with  respect  to  his  workmen  that  he  would  like 
to  get  rid  of,  and  that  every  trade-union  would 
in  the  same  way  like  to  improve  the  conditions 
under  which  its  members  are  employed.  Yet  as 
both  employer  and  workman  get  their  living  by 
carrying  on  the  business,  each  prefers  to  submit 
to  some  restrictions  rather  than  risk  his  liveli- 
hood by  a  lockout  or  a  strike. 

"It  is,  of  course,  natural  for  each  side  to  try 
and  get  rid  of  the  conditions  which  in  England 
arise  from  the  relations  of  the  parties,  and  in 
New  Zealand  are  imposed  by  the  court. 

"The  object  of  the  penalty  clause  is,  I  take  it, 
to  prevent  either  party  from  wriggling  out  of 
these  latter  conditions.  It  surely  cannot  be  be- 
yond the  reach  of  human  ingenuity  to  make  such 
clauses  efficient.  However,  on  this,  as  on  many 
other  points,  we  shall  be  helped  by  a  wider 
experience. 

"As  I  have  said,  the  act  is  an  experiment,  but 
an  experiment  with  good  hopes  of  success.  In 
four  or  five  years  we  shall  be  able  to  speak  with 
more  certainty.  Even,  however,  if  in  New 
Zealand  the  act  should  be  permanently  success- 
ful, it  by  no  means  follows  that  it  should  suc- 
ceed under  the  very  different  conditions  which 
obtain  here. 

"The  act  at  any  rate  is  a  bold  and  honest  at- 


1 68      A  Country  Without  Strikes 

tempt  to  grapple  with  one  of  the  most  difficult  of 
our  social  problems,  and  I  submit  that  its  opera- 
tion is  worthy  of  careful  study.  It  is  yet  too 
early  to  pronounce  a  final  judgment  on  our  at- 
tempt; but  even  if  the  attempt  should  fail,  the 
failure  may  give  light  to  a  better  way." 

One  of  the  unexpected  effects  of  the  new  in- 
stitution is  that  the  benefit  of  the  better  wages 
and  conditions  established  by  the  Arbitration 
Court  reach  other  workingmen,  though  they 
were  not  concerned  in  the  proceedings  before  it. 

I  learned  of  a  case  in  which  a  large  contractor 
had  hired  a  carpenter  without  specific  agreement 
as  to  his  wages.  When  pay  day  came  the  work- 
man refused  to  accept  the  pay  tendered  him,  as 
it  was  less  than  had  been  fixed  for  the  trade  by 
recent  arbitration.  He  summoned  his  employer 
before  a  magistrate  not  of  the  Arbitration 
Court.  This  employer,  though  one  of  the  larg- 
est in  Wellington,  was  not  a  member  of  the 
employers'  association,  and  had  not  been  brought 
under  the  award  which  had  been  m.ade  govern- 
ing the  trade;  but  the  magistrate  held  that  that 
award  fixed  "the  custom  of  the  trade,"  and  that 
the  employer  must  pay  this  customary  rate  of 
wage. 

The  judges  of  the  Arbitration  Court  have 
done  very  little  legislating  under  cover  of  inter- 


Some  New  Principles  169 

pretation,  as  courts  have  been  known  sometimes 
to  do,  but  in  their  decisions  there  is  a  clear  ten- 
dency towards  the  estabhshment  of  some  new 
principles  in  business.  It  would  be  inevitable 
that  something  of  the  kind  should  be  developed 
when  an  institution  so  novel  and  so  powerful 
was  introduced  into  the  belligerent  chaos  of 
modern  industry.  A  handful  of  sugar  crystals 
thrown  into  a  vat  of  sorghum  syrup  makes  the 
whole  mass,  until  then  obdurate,  crystallise  at 
once. 

In  the  dispute  between  the  Westport  Coal 
Company  and  its  men,  the  court  said : 

"If  work  is  slack  and  the  men  wish,  the  com- 
pany is  recommended  to  distribute  the  work 
among  the  men  rather  than  to  discharge  em- 
ployes." 

And  again  it  said,  "that  so  long  as  there  are 
efficient,  capable  men  at  Denniston  out  of  work 
the  company  shall  employ  these,  either  by  con- 
tract or  day  labour  .  .  .  before  the  com- 
pany calls  for  tenders  from  outsiders  or  em- 
ploys outsiders." 

As  to  these  awards,  the  Secretary  for  Labour 
makes  the  comment  that  they  "affect  principles 
in  the  relation  of  employer  and  employed  hither- 
to considered  as  being  entirely  within  the  do- 
main of  private  judgment  and  freedom  of  con- 
tract." 


I/O     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

Arbitration  does  not  remove  the  bottom  evil 
of  all  in  the  labour  world,  the  economic  inequal- 
ity of  masters  and  men  which  makes  a  free  con- 
tract impossible  because  one  of  the  parties  is  not 
free;  but  it  certainly  adds  a  humanising  touch 
to  the  methods  of  the  struggle,  and  all  civilisa- 
tion is  lifted  a  stage. 

The  workingman  is  certainly  less  at  a  disad- 
vantage under  a  system  in  which  he  is  guaran- 
teed the  right  to  be  heard,  and  to  be  heard  in 
public,  than  under  the  present  capitalists'  regime 
where  he  is  so  often  refused  any  hearing,  public 
or  private.  The  workers  are  safer  before  a 
Court  of  Arbitration  than  before  a  General 
Manager  or  a  Board  of  Directors,  or  a  general 
fixing  wages  by  martial  law. 

The  New  Zealand  court  has  but  just  touched 
in  its  decisions  on  the  most  important  principle 
at  issue  in  the  regulation  of  wages — whether 
wages  must  follow  prices  or  prices  wages.  Must 
wages  be  dependent  on  prices  necessary  to  mar- 
ket commodities,  or  must  these  prices  be  depend- 
ent on  the  wages  necessary  to  maintain  the  peo- 
ple in  decent  comfort? 

The  workingman's  mind  is  evidently  moving 
to  the  latter  position.  Several  of  the  greatest 
strikes  of  recent  years,  like  the  English  coal 
strike  of  1893,  and  the  strike  in  Lord  Penrhyn's 
quarries,  have  had  the  "living  wage"  for  their 


Judges  and  Political  Economy   171 

inspiring  principle,  and  this  new  position  of  the 
workingmen  in  those  strikes  received  the  open 
support  of  some  of  the  most  influential  members 
of  Parliament,  newspapers,  and  even  capitalists 
of  Great  Britain. 

This  doctrine  seeks  to  make  true  the  fiction 
of  John  Stuart  Mill  that  wages  are  determined 
by  the  standard  of  living  among  the  working- 
men.  What  John  Stuart  Mill  said  was  the 
law  of  wages,  the  workingmen  are  seeking  to 
bring  about.  The  New  Zealand  law,  the  mo- 
ment this  new  political  economy  that  prices  must 
follow  wages  invades  the  bench,  can  be  made  a 
powerful  instrument  in  reinforcing  the  working- 
men.  Decisions  made  by  judges  in  industrial 
matters  can  usually  be  observed  to  be  based  not 
so  much  on  "law"  as  on  their  notions  of  political 
economy. 

A  way  in  which  the  workingmen  as  voters 
could  secure  the  introduction  of  compulsory  ar- 
bitration is  suggested  by  the  Fabian  Society  in 
the  tract  to  which  we  have  just  referred. 

Local  authorities  can  "make  it  a  condition  of 
the  contract  that  all  disputes  between  employer 
and  workingmen  shall  be  referred  to  arbitra- 
tion" in  contracts  given  out  by  them. 

Important  as  the  Conciliation  Boards  and  Ar- 
bitration Courts  of  New  Zealand  are  in  their 
special  field  of  labour  troubles,  they  have  an 


172     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

aspect  even  more  important.  They  are  the  only 
cheap,  informal,  speedy  courts  of  justice  which 
exist  anywhere.  In  these  New  Zealand  courts 
alone  do  the  people  get  a  taste  of  that  cheap  and 
speedy  justice  of  which  they  have  always  been 
dreaming,  which  the  agitators,  in  the  days  of  the 
Puritan  Commonwealth,  begged  might  be  made 
to  break  forth  out  of  the  ground  like  a  fountain. 
In  these  courts  another  field  has  been  added  to 
the  social  territory  wrested  from  the  region  of 
private  war  and  violence,  and  another  baron  or 
strong  man  has  been  harnessed  to  the  collar  of 
the  common  good. 

The  spirit  of  the  law  in  this  aspect  is  admir- 
ably voiced  in  a  paragraph  in  Secretary  Tre- 
gear's  report  for  the  Department  of  Labour  in 
1898.  In  opposing  the  proposition  that  all  the 
costs  of  the  board  should  be  charged  to  the  dis- 
puting parties,  Mr.  Tregear  said : 

"Great  care  must  be  taken  lest  the  usefulness 
of  the  acts  be  crippled  by  the  fear  of  extreme 
expense.  In  such  cases,  justice  becomes  a 
luxury  only  to  be  enjoyed  by  the  rich,  and  the 
present  merit  of  the  act,  namely,  that  it  reaches 
down  to  remove  the  tiniest  industrial  irritant — 
would  be  lost.  It  is  better  that  the  country 
should  bear  the  slight  expense  attending  the  sit- 
ting of  boards  than  that  one  citizen  should  have 
to  say,  'I  am  oppressed  and  unjustly  treated, 
but  am  not  rich  enough  to  make  my  complaint 


The  Wards  of  Wealth  173 

reach  the  ears  of  those  in  power;  I  must  suffer 
in  silence.'  .  .  .  The  reproach  often  used 
in  the  past  concerning  courts  of  justice  and  the 
part  played  in  them  by  the  power  of  wealth 
should  never  be  allowed  to  be  cast  upon  the 
Court  of  Arbitration,  and,  although  perhaps  it 
may  be  idealistic  to  hope  that  one  day  justice 
may  be  dispensed  free  of  charge  to  all,  still  in 
this  matter  the  country  may  draw  near  the  ideal 
by  taking  on  itself  the  burden  of  its  weaker 
members  at  a  cost  infinitesimal  when  divided 
among  all,  and  it  will  be  repaid  by  the  steadiness 
with  which  the  general  level  of  industrial  life 
will  be  sustained." 

We  all  preach  that  the  property  and  ability  of 
each — the  ten  talents — exist  for  the  service  of 
all.  That  is  the  bottom  doctrine  of  all  civilisa- 
tion. We  open  the  oldest  book  we  have,  the 
"Precepts  of  Ptah  Hotep,"  and  we  find  it  there. 
New  Zealand  practises  it  in  a  new  field. 

New  Zealand  has  made  the  most  important 
advance  in  the  practical  enforcement  of  this 
doctrine  of  the  stewardship  of  wealth.  It  is 
the  first  to  establish  that,  in  this  field  of  the  re- 
lations of  labour  and  capital,  the  steward  is  not 
to  be  left  to  himself  to  determine  how  he  is  to 
administer  the  trust. 

Industries,  it  is  a  fundamental  thought  in  this 
New  Zealand  legislation,  are  not  individual  cre- 
ations ;  they  are  not  made  by  the  workingmen 


174     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

alone  nor  by  capital  alone,  but  are  a  social  cre- 
ation and  subject  to  social  control.  Every  manu- 
facture, every  investment,  has  been  brought 
to  where  it  is  now  by  long  ages  of  social  effort. 
It  is  kept  going  to-day  by  the  co-operation  of  all 
the  people  in  countless  ways,  not  the  least 
among  them  the  protection  which  the  people 
gives,  through  the  state. 

If  property  is  a  trust,  says  the  spirit  of  New 
Zealand  legislation  not  only  in  this  but  in  other 
laws,  it  is  the  interests  of  the  ward  that  are  para- 
mount, not  those  of  the  trustee;  the  ward  must 
have  something  to  say,  and  the  state  must  pro- 
tect the  ward  and  regulate  the  trustee. 

The  Compulsory  Arbitration  law  of  New 
Zealand  and  its  laws  for  progressive  taxation, 
land  resumption,  and  labour  regulation,  are,  in 
truth,  the  most  advanced  applications  yet  made 
in  the  modern  world  of  the  doctrines  of  Carlyle 
and  Ruskin  and  all  the  great  poets,  that  captains 
of  industry  are  captains  in  the  public  service; 
that  the  labourers  and  the  employer  alike  are 
social  functionaries ;  that  to  labour  and  to  lead 
labour  are  duties  which  no  citizen  has  a  right  to 
disregard ;  that  they  who  do  not  work,  shall  not 
eat,  nor,  says  the  Compulsory  Arbitration  law, 
shall  they  fight,  which  most  men  would  rather 
do  than  eat. 

The  Compulsory  Arbitration  law  is  an  at- 
tempt to  realise  in  its  field  the  loftiest  teachings 


The  Great  Question  175 

of  the  loftiest  apostles  of  the  religion  of  human- 
ity, the  religion  of  labour  and  love. 

From  the  ideal  point  of  view,  it  is  a  very 
crude  attempt,  a  mere  rudimentary  beginning, 
but,  from  the  practical  point  of  view,  it  is  one  of 
the  surest  forward  steps  yet  made  by  any  people. 

These  people,  by  undertaking  thus  to  enforce 
the  social  duties  of  industry,  will  be  all  the  more 
likely  to  take  the  other  steps  that  their  new  path 
will  call  for.  It  is,  for  instance,  imperative  that 
they  educate  every  citizen  to  industry,  and  that 
then  they  guarantee  him  the  opportunity  of 
industry. 

Compulsory  arbitration  is  only  a  step  in  that 
direction,  but  it  is  a  step.  The  greatest  eco- 
nomic question  involved  in  compulsory  arbitra- 
tion is,  whether  property  and  business  shall  be 
distributed  by  the  methods  of  reason  and 
brotherliness,  or  by  the  methods  of  force  and 
mere  greed ;  whether  men  shall  have  a  fair 
chance  according  to  their  ability,  enterprise, 
prudence  and  self-respect,  or  whether  all  the 
business  chances  shall  go  to  the  most  unscrupu- 
lous and  greedy,  regardless  of  all  other  intellect- 
ual or  moral  qualities. 

It  is  a  question  of  the  deepest  force  at  work 
in  the  distribution  of  wealth;  it  is  an  economic 
question,  economic  all  the  more  because  it  is 
also  an  ethical  question. 

New  Zealand  answers  this  question  as  the 


176     A  Country  Without  Strikes 

progress  of  civilisation  always  has  answered  it. 
An  act  which  seemed  merely  to  contemplate 
peace  in  industry,  if  it  proves  permanently  suc- 
cessful will  turn  out  to  be  a  powerful  instrument 
in  the  democratisation  of  industry,  the  equalisa- 
tion of  economic  conditions,  the  humanising  of 
life,  and  the  expansion  of  civilisation  into  a 
new  world. 

A  genius,  says  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  shows 
himself  by  carrying  an  existing  idea  or  an  insti- 
tution a  step  farther  than  it  had  gone  before. 
Many  a  man,  he  says,  before  him  has  taken  the 
first,  second  or  third  steps.  The  genius  which 
conceived  and  framed  the  Compulsory  Arbitra- 
tion law  answers  exactly  to  this  description. 
It  has  taken  the  old  institution  of  the  court,  the 
old  ideas  of  peace  and  justice,  and  has  carried 
them  on  into  a  new  field.  It  has  made  no  break 
with  the  past,  but  has  developed  all  its  familiar 
and  venerable  processes  one  step  farther  in  their 
social  evolution. 

The  establishment  of  a  court  in  a  field  where 
only  violence  had  been  the  judge  before,  the  ad- 
vance of  the  principles  and  institutions  of  civil 
law  into  social  territory  given  over  to  anarch3\ 
is  always  one  of  the  great  events.  The  emer- 
gence of  the  Geneva  tribunal  of  1872,  above  the 
troubled  waters  of  international  belligerency 
was  such  an  event. 


International  Arbitration        177 

The  Compulsory  Arbitration  law  of  New 
Zealand  is  such  an  event  in  a  world  of  wars  not 
less  devastating  than  those  between  nations.  It 
is  an  event  more  entirely  without  precedent  in 
the  sphere  of  business,  and  of  more  startling 
interest  than  it  would  have  been  in  the  sphere  of 
politics,  if  the  powers  in  the  Peace  Congress  at 
The  Hague  had  set  up  an  authority,  as  some 
peace  congress  some  day  will  do,  to  forbid  all 
war,  and  had  clothed  it  with  the  force  to  make 
its  prohibition  good.  As  soon  as  the  majority 
of  nations  want  international  arbitration  they 
will  have  it,  but  it  can  come  only  by  compulsory 
arbitration  as  long  as  there  is  one  nation  fool 
enough  or  knave  enough  to  prefer  to  fight. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  aspect  of  the  law  of  New 
Zealand  is  this — that  it  "blazes  the  trail"  along 
which  international  arbitration  must  move,  if  it 
would  succeed. 

We  discover  then  that  in  New  Zealand,  in 
compulsory  arbitration,  we  are  dealing  not 
merely  with  a  novelty  in  a  subordinate  field  of 
legislation,  but  with  a  new  growth  of  the  living 
organism  of  modern  Society. 

There  is  only  one  Compulsory  Arbitration 
law  in  the  world,  and  that  has  been  in  operation 
only  four  years  and  in  an  isolated  country,  and 
we  must  not  generalise  too  freely.  Similar  laws 
might  operate  differently  in  different  countries ; 


178      A  Country  Without  Strikes 

this  law  may  still  be  crippled  by  sinister  amend- 
ments moved  by  false  friends. 

Not  forgetting  this,  let  us  sum  up  the  results 
and  tendencies  of  compulsory  arbitration  as  evi- 
denced in  actual  incidents  of  the  industrial  life 
of  New  Zealand,  in  the  last  four  years : 

1st.   Strikes  and  lockouts  have  been  stopped. 

2d.  Wages  and  terms  have  been  fixed  so  that 
manufacturers  can  make  their  contracts  ahead 
without  fear  of  disturbance. 

3d.  Workingmen,  too,  knowing  that  their 
income  cannot  be  cut  down  nor  locked  out,  can 
marry,  buy  land,  build  homes. 

4th.  Disputes  arise  continually,  new  terms 
are  fixed,  but  industry  goes  on  without  inter- 
ruption. 

5th.   No  factory  has  been  closed  by  the  act. 

6th.  The  country  is  more  prosperous  than 
ever. 

7th.  The  awards  of  the  Arbitration  Court  fix 
a  standard  of  living  which  other  courts  accept  in 
deciding  cases  affecting  workingmen. 

8th.  Awards  made  by  compulsory  arbitration 
are  often  renewed  by  a 'voluntary  agreement 
when  they  expire. 

9th.  Trade-unions  are  given  new  rights,  and 
are  called  upon  to  admit  all  competent  working- 
men  in  the  trade. 

loth.  Compulsion  in  the  background  makes 
conciliation  easier. 


A  Summary  179 

nth.  Compulsory  publicity  gives  the  public, 
the  real  arbitrator,  all  the  facts  of  every  dispute. 

1 2th.  Salaried  classes  as  well  as  wage-earners 
are  claiming  the  benefits  of  arbitration. 

13th.  Peaceable  settlement  with  their  men 
has  been  made  possible  for  the  majorities  of  the 
employers  who  wanted  to  arbitrate,  but  were 
prevented  by  minorities  of  their  associates. 

14th.  Labour  and  capital  are  being  organised 
into  trade-unions  and  associations  instead  of 
mobs  and  monopolists. 

15th.  Trade  honesty  is  promoted  by  the  ex- 
posure and  prevention  of  frauds  on  the  public. 

1 6th.  Humane  and  law-abiding  business  men 
seek  the  protection  of  the  law  to  save  themselves 
from  destruction  by  the  competition  of  inhu- 
mane and  law-breaking  rivals. 

17th.  The  weak  and  the  strong  are  equalised 
both  among  capitalists  and  the  workingmen. 

1 8th.  The  victory  is  given  as  nearly  as  pos- 
sible to  the  right  instead  of  to  the  strong,  as  in 
war. 

19th.  The  concentration  of  wealth  and  power 
are  checked. 

20th.  The  distribution  of  wealth  is  deter- 
mined along  lines  of  reason,  justice,  and  the 
greatest  need,  instead  of  along  lines  of  the  great- 
est greed. 

2 1  St.  Democracy  is  strengthened  by  these 
equalisations. 


i8o      A  Country  Without  Strikes 

22d.  It  furnishes  the  people  their  only  cheap, 
speedy,  and  untechnical  justice. 

If  the  American  people  have  any  lesson  to 
learn  from  these  experiences  of  New  Zealand, 
they  can  be  trusted  to  learn  it.  The  object  of 
the  writer  has  not  been  to  enforce  his  views,  but 
to  present  the  .facts  of  an  interesting  social  ex- 
periment, on  which  the  public  could,  if  it  chose, 
build  views  of  its  own. 

Of  course,  "our  circumstances  are  different." 
Our  circumstances  have  not  been  so  different 
but  that  they  have  developed  the  same  evils. 
Perhaps  they  may  develop  the  same  remedy. 

The  New  Zealanders  have  had  several  great 
advantages.  They  are  a  people  of  one  race,  and 
they  are  isolated.  That  they  are  united  by  race 
is  an  accident.  Union  can  be  also  achieved  by 
moral  will,  as  doctors  used  to  say  of  the  healing 
of  a  wound,  "by  first  intention,"  or  "by  immedi- 
ate union,"  to  use  the  newest  phrase. 

Men  of  almost  every  race  have  united  to  form 
the  politics  and  society  of  these  United  States. 
Why  can  they  not  unite  to  reform  them?  And 
as  for  the  isolation,  that  is  a  fortunate  incident 
for  the  weak,  but  the  United  States  has  a  nobler 
kind  of  isolation  in  its  might  and  wealth.  It 
can  stand  alone  for  any  cause  it  chooses  to 
espouse. 


INDEX. 


Agitators,  146. 

Appeals,  2Q,  151. 

Apprentices,  48,  52,  72,  99. 

Arbitration  and  competition,  45, 
58,  ^9,  103. 
— Compulsory,  35  ; 
—Court,  18,  19  ;  powers  of,  23. 
— awards,  24  ; 
— delay.   80  ; 

— government  employees,  31 ; 
— international,  177  ; 
— Massachusetts,  8,  162  ; 
— organization  of  labor  and  cap- 
ital, 62. 

— payment    of    arbitrators,  24, 
152  ; 

— private,  7,  iS,  35,  44,  114,  125, 
160  ; 

— promotes  trades  unions,  76  ; 
— protects  employers,  45. 

Arbitration  by  trade  tribunals,  49. 

Association  of  employers,  58. 

Auckland — boot  and  shoe  manu- 
facturers, 37  ;  clothing  manu- 
facturers, 92;  sewing  women, 90. 

Awards,  26;  appeal  from,  30; 
— duration  of,  51,  134  ; 
— enforcement  of,  t6,  149  ; 
— intolerable,  122  ; 
—penalties  for  violation,  26,  27, 
29,  138,  140,  149,  166  ; 
— uniform,  133. 

Bakers,  66. 

Best,  Hon.  R.  W.,  153. 

Books,  must  be  produced,  22,  51, 
'45- 

Boot  and  shoe  men,  33,  et  seq. 

Capital,  organization  under  arbi- 
tration, 62  ; 
— a  wingless  bird,  160. 

Coal  Mining  Company,  75. 

Clothing  manufacturers'  associa- 
tion, 107. 

Clothing  trade,  89. 


Committees  or  mobs,  61,  62. 
Competition  and  arbitration,  45, 

58,  84,  99,  103. 
Compulsion,  11,  20,  42,  52,  119,  12s; 

— and  the  law  of  the  market, 

123  ; 

— in  other  legislation,  126; 

— threefold,  16; 

— voluntary,  127. 
Compulsory  arbitration,  cost  of, 

152; 

— and  democracy,  176; 

— and    distribution  of    wealth, 

17s; 

— under  municipalities,  171; 

— new  principles    in    business, 

169; 

— in  Parliament,  129,  158. 

— South  Australia,  14. 
Compulsory      arbitration       law, 

amendment,  80,  109, 124, 147, 158, 

1S9; 
Compulsory      arbitration      law, 

analysis  of,  16,  178; 

— appeal,  151  ; 

— awfa.rds  renewed  voluntarily, 

178; 

— evasions,  14  ;  gives  stability  to 

business,  155  ; 

-•justice  in  a  new  field.  176  ; 

— spirit  of,  174  ; 

— summary  of  results,  178. 
Compulsory  publicity,  97. 
Conciliation,  Boards  of,  11,  16,  18, 

19,  23,  29,  30. 
Conciliation,  voluntary,  105. 
Conseils  des  Prud'hommes,  7,  162. 
Costs,  24. 

Denmark,  lockout,  160. 
Disturbance  of  industry,  146,  147, 

157- 

Durham  Joint  Committee,  161 . 
Educational  influence,  85. 
Edwards,  Judge,  2,  123,  131,  137. 


1 82 


INDEX. 


Employers  associations,    2s,    s8, 
61; 

— cannot  escape,  6;,  67,  145- 
— favor     comjjulsory    arbitra- 
tion, 102,  153,  156  ; 
— how  summoned,  66; 
— preference  to,  88  ; 
— promote  trade  unions,  104  ; 
— registration  of,  32  ; 
— representation  oi,  146  ; 
— resistance  to  arbitration,  144  ; 
— summoned  individually,  22. 

Engineers,  69, 
— strike,  118. 

Equalization  of  conditions,  109. 

Experiments,  4,  12,  165. 

Experts,  20,  46,  51,  94,  123. 

Fabian  Society  tract,  160. 

Fines,  27,  139. 

France,  7,  162. 

Frauds  prevented,  97. 

Frivolous  cases,  2';,  146. 

Furniture  workers,  136. 

Germany,  new  strike  bill,  r62  ; 
— strikes,  i5i. 

Gold  miners,  65,  132,  145. 

Government  employees,  31. 

Great  Britain,  arbitration  laws,  7. 

Grocers'  employees,  77. 

Hague,  Peace  Congress,  177. 

Hereford,  Bishop  of,  117. 

Hours,  48,  52,99,  132. 

Impartiality  of  the  Court,  74. 

Imprisonment,  29,  120,  139 

Industrial   Corpor..tion   of    New 
Zealand,  147. 

Initiative  of  the  state,  87 

International  arbitration,  177 

Intolerable  decisions,  27,  120 

Iron  moulders,  64,  133 

Iron  workers,  Auckland,  61. 

Iron  workers,  135,  156. 

Jennings,  Honourable  W.  T.,  loi. 

Judges,  business,  3,  69,  130. 

Judge,  presides,  20. 

Labor  organization  under  arbi- 
tration, 62. 

Law  of  the  market,  122. 

Lawyers,  22,  43,  84,  155. 

Livery  stable  men  excluded,  155. 

Living  wage,  170. 

Lockouts  forbidden,  20. 

Machinery,  48. 

Machinists,  99. 


Majority  rule,  4',  no,  125,  127. 

Mandamus,  79. 

Manufacturers,  boot  and  shoe,  32 

et  seq.;  clothing,  92,  107  ;  unor- 

ganize;,  56,  99 ; 

— promote  trade  unions,  91. 
Maritime  strike,  5,  147. 
Massachusetts,  arbitration,  8,162. 
Mills,  James,  153. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  171. 
Minimum  wage,  48,  71,  78,  83,  95. 
Minorities   and    arbitration,    97, 

102,  114,  119. 
Mobs  or  committees,  61. 
Monkswell,  Lord,  117. 
New  South  Wales,  punishment  of 

strikers,  149. 

— voluntary  arbitration,  9. 
New  York,  arbitration,  162. 
Non-unionists,  under  arbitration, 

48,  66. 
Organization  of  labor;  of  capital, 

i8,  62. 
Overtime,  48,  78,  99. 
Painters,  133. 
Parliament  and   arbitration,   29, 

153. 
Passion  lessened,  85,  166. 
Pay  of  arbitrators,  24. 
Peace  Congress,  177. 
Penalties,  27,  138  etseq.,  157,  166. 
Piece  work,  48,  52,  99. 
j  Pitt,  William,  126. 
Printers,  136. 

Prosperity  under  compulsorj-  ar- 
bitration, II,  152,  159. 
,  Ptah  Hotep,  173. 
;  Publicit\-,  22,  121,  128. 
Public  opinion.  31. 
"  R  ",  117. 

Railroad  employees,  31. 
Range  makers,  76. 
Reeves,  Hon.  Wm.  P.,  6,  15,  27,  ^o, 

87,  89,  116. 
Registration  of  employers,  32,  61; 

— of  trade  unions,  17,  32,  6r. 
Reinstatement     o  f      discharged 

men,  75. 
Rigg,  Honourabl'  John,  74,  104. 
Seamen,  66,  67,  155. 
Seddon,  Right  Honourable  R.  J., 

«54- 
Sewing  Women's  Union,  8y. 
Ship  owners,  68. 


INDEX. 


183 


Shirt  makers,  95. 
Shoemakers,  32. 
Shoe  manufacturers,  130. 
South  Australia,  14,  17,  21,  135. 
Street  car  men  excluded,  155. 
.Strike,  Auckland,  38. 
Strike,  the  boot,  cost  of,  46. 
Strike,  in  court  room,  3. 
Strike,  maritime,  5,  147. 
Strikers  punished  in  New  South 

Wales,  14Q. 
Strikes,  146. 

— England,  coal  strike  of  1893, 

170 ; 

— Europe,  10 ; 

—forbidden,  20  ; 

— France,  162  ; 

— Germany,  161  ; 

—Great  Britain,  118,  161 ; 

—New  South  Wales,  9  ; 

— in  Lord    Penrhyn's  quarries. 

170  ; 
Sweating-,  49,  52  ;  shops,  89. 
Tailors  and  tailoresses,  93 
Tailoresses,  increased  pay,  105. 
Thring,  Lord,  117. 
Times,  London,  116,  is7  ; 

— Judge  Williams  in,  163. 
Trade  unions,  16,  26 

— demand  compulsion,  ii; 

— favor  the  law,  158  ; 

—given  new  rights,  18; 

— must  be  inclusive  82; 

—must  give  preference,  88  ; 

— must  register,  17,  32. 


Trade  unions,   preference  to,  47, 

52,  53,  56,  57-  64,  65,  68,  69,  75,  78, 

82,  95,  99,  106,  124,  151 ; 

— preference  to,  withheld,    65, 

66; 

— promoted  by  employers,  104  ; 

— discharged  members  of,  re- 
instated, 75  ; 

— register  of  members  out  of 

\vork,  81  ; 

— registration  of,   32  ;   warning 

to,  145. 
Trade  unionists  discharged,  loi. 
Tregear,  Secretary,  30,  i6g,  172. 
Trusts  and  arbitration,  88. 
Tyranny,  117. 

Union  Steamship  Company,  153. 
Visitation,  powers  of,  22. 
Wages,  s2,  99,  134,  1^8; 

— fixed  by  arbitration,  168; 

— fixed  by  law,  128,  129; 

— living,  170; 

— maximum  fixed,  71. 

— minimum,  48,  71,  83,  05; 

— and  prices,  170; 

— under  arbitration,  43. 
Wealth,  stewardship,  173. 
Westport  Coal  Company,  169. 
Williams,  Judge,  in   the   London 

I'imes,  163. 
Witnesses,  22 

Witnesses,  compensation,  24. 
Women  workers,  76,  89. 
Work  continues  during  arbitra- 
tion, 46,  54,  113. 


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